Making a complaint about social care services – what should you expect?

If you have a bad experience and your care goes wrong, it’s vital that services put things right as soon as possible and learn from what happened.

However, we know from our conversations with you that making a complaint isn’t always straightforward. Some people worry that by speaking up their care will be affected or that they won’t be taken seriously. Others find the process too complicated.

To make it clear what to expect when making and dealing with complaints about social care services, we’ve been working with the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman to develop a Single Complaints Statement for both professionals and the public. Together, we’ve worked with organisations from across the social care sector as part of the Quality Matters Initiative to tackle people’s concerns.

So what should you expect?

• Encouragement and reassurance: You should feel encouraged to give feedback about the care you received and be given any information you need to do so. Your treatment should not be unfairly affected because you shared your views. You should receive reassurance that if you need to make a complaint, your care or the care of others will not be affected.
• Respect and involvement: You should feel listened to, respected, and involved throughout making a complaint. You should receive the proper support to make your complaint, including independent advocacy where appropriate.
• A simple process with well-trained staff: The complaints process should be easy to find. Organisations and their staff should have the skills to listen and understand your feedback and deal with it openly and transparently.
• To be taken seriously and to know what will change as a result: Your feedback should be taken seriously. You should receive an explanation of the next steps outlining how your concerns will be addressed. It should also be made clear how the organisation uses people’s feedback to improve their services.
• A simple process to follow for when there’s more than one organisation involved: There can often be more than one organisation involved with your care. If your complaint covers more than one organisation, you should be signposted to the right organisation, be able to make one complaint and receive a joint response from those involved.
• Clear information on what to do if you’re not happy with the result: If you are unhappy with the result of your complaint, you should be given clear information about how to contact the Ombudsman for an independent review.

However big or small the issue, if it’s important to one person, it’s very likely that it affects others, too. By sharing your story, you can help doctors, dentists, hospitals, and care homes understand what’s working and what could be better for you and your community.