Agenda item

Following consideration of performance monitoring of comments, compliments and complaints in July, the Panel received a further update which included the feedback obtained from the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) for 2021. The Cabinet Member with responsibility for Corporate Services and Communication advised that the complaints team had recently been transferred to the IT and Digital Team, where it was anticipated that efficiencies to the systems could be made through automation. The Strategic Director commented that the LGSCO letter was an improvement on the previous years, although there were still some areas for improvement, to be addressed across the Council.

The Complaints Manager advised that the 2020/21 Annual report relating to Corporate representations had just been published on the Council’s website and the reports for Adult Social Care representations and Children’s Social Care representations were due to be published imminently. She provided the Panel with a brief overview of the trends shown in the above reports. She highlighted that as a result of the efforts of Worcestershire Children First,  the timescales for stage 1 children’s social care complaints being completed had significantly improved this year.

The Panel raised a number of questions as follows:

·         LGSCO letter remedy process. The Chairman referred to the delays in the remedy process which had been raised in the previous year’s letter and were still persisting. The Complaints Manager acknowledged that there were still some issues with the system and the Strategic Director agreed to follow this up and ensure it was resolved. When the LGSCO makes findings against the Council, the Complaints Manager highlighted that on occasions as well as requiring the Council to tighten procedures and offer a financial remedy, they might also take matters one stage further and ask the Council to investigate whether other customers could have been disadvantaged in the same way that the complainant had been. 

·         Independent Investigators. The Complaints Manager confirmed that 9 new investigators had been recruited recently, with a further two due to join the Team by the end of the year. It was clarified that the investigators were not employees as they couldn’t be guaranteed a certain level of work. Most of these investigators were part-time and they also often worked in the role for other authorities or had other commitments. The new recruits would help to spread the load of the Stage 2 corporate or social care complaint cases (and also for some adult cases) and it was anticipated that the impact of this recent recruitment on the compliance data was likely to be seen by March 2022.

·         LGSCO letter cross referencing. A Member queried the impact of the inability to cross reference the Ombudsman and Council cases. The Complaints Manager advised that the lack of referencing caused a number of issues for instance, the figures on the Councils website wouldn’t necessarily match with those on the LGSCO site. Also, in some circumstances, there weren’t case references, of cases that the Council had no knowledge of, which is then counted against the authority.

·         Statutory Children’s complaints completed in 65 days. The Complaints Manager confirmed that any complaints involving staff would be routed through the staff disciplinary system rather than the complaints procedure. With regard to the impact of key staff being unavailable either through sickness or because they had left the Council, the Complaints Manager confirmed this did cause some problems at times and discussions had been taking place as to whether access to ex-employees could be possible in future.

In respect of the action plan for improvement of Stage 2 Complaint investigation timescales agreed at the July Panel meeting, the following progress was noted:

·         Direct access to Liquid Logic for Independent Investigators and Independent Persons - this had not yet been achieved. The Strategic Director agreed to take this matter forward.

·         5 working day limit for agreeing interview notes - this had been implemented and was making a difference.

·         Promote use of Conflict Resolution Meetings - this had been offered in a handful of adult social care cases but take up had been limited. The outcome of one case was awaited to see whether it was successful.

The Panel requested an update report at its meeting in March 2022.