Agenda item

A report was presented by Angela Esslinger, Complaints and Appeals Manager, providing the Statutory Social Care Annual Report on Complaints and Customer Feedback for 2020/21.

It was reported that complaints represented just 1% of all active adult social care and children's social care cases throughout Lancashire in 2020/21.

Adult Social Care

Complaints had reduced from 2019/20 from 536 to 420. This service had had a year on year increase for many years although it should be noted that complaints had been paused for 3 months in 2020 due to Covid-19. The two most frequent subjects of complaints were in relation to support planning and finance.

An extensive list of learning points was provided in the report, which were mainly surrounding communication. It was noted that a Shared Learning Panel had recently been established, in order to identify the themes and root causes of complaints, and to cascade learning across the council.

Compliments had increased by 8%; these were mainly in relation to equipment/adaptations and new processes were in place to highlight compliments.

It was reported that, as the Ombudsman also upheld complaints that the county council had previously upheld, the actual uphold rate for adult social care complaints was 15%.

Children & Young People and Children's Social Care

Statutory complaints had reduced from 252 in 2019/20 to 205 in 2020/21 and non-statutory complaints from 139 in 2019/20 to 90 in 2020/21, most likely due to the 3 month pausing of complaints due to Covid-19. The proportion of complaints being resolved early in the complaints journey was 52% in 2020/21, compared to 45% in 2019/20. It was reported that lessons learnt were very similar to those in adult social care, mainly around miscommunication with families involved with the service. Further details on learning were provided in the report.

It was noted that complaints about the Inclusion Service were classed as non-statutory if children's social care services were not involved. These complaints had increased from 36 in 2019/20 to 139 in 2020/21, although it was thought this was due to the new processes in place to capture these complaints.

In 2020/21, the Ombudsman had received a total of 55 enquiries in relation to children's social care, Inclusion and Education Services in Lancashire, compared to 74 in 2019/20. Of these 55, a total of 48 decisions had been made by the Ombudsman and only 19% of these decisions had been upheld, making an actual uphold rate of 10% due to the Ombudsman also upholding complaints that had previously been upheld by the county council.

In relation to the majority of complaints being about mis-communication, the Chair pointed out that as systems were complicated for both adults and children's services, these needed to be explained properly to all our customers.

Some complaints had been received around the content of emails shared with customers containing unprofessional dialogue between internal departments. County Councillor Buckley stated that a message needed to be sent out to emphasise the importance of always using professional language in all written and digital correspondence.

The Chair asked how complaints in Lancashire compared to other authorities. It was reported that, overall, Lancashire was around 10^th in the league table but it was important to note that only 1% of complaints were received from all contacts with the county council and that Lancashire served a large number of residents.

Resolved: The Cabinet Committee on Performance Improvement noted the statutory social care complaints annual report for children and young people and adult services for 2020/21, acknowledging the associated learning, so that the county council could meet its legal obligations.