Agenda item
Complaints Annual Report 2016-2017
This version of the 2016-2017 Annual Complaints report focuses on complaints performance in the Community Wellbeing (CWB) Department, Adult Social Care (ASC) directorate, Culture service and the Children and Young People (CYP) Department. The report covers the period from April 2016 to March 2017 and comparative data going back to 2013/14 has been provided where available.
Minutes:
Councillor Margaret McLennan (Deputy Leader of the Council) introduced the report which provided information about complains performance in the Community and Wellbeing Department, the Adult Social Care Directorate, the Culture Service and the Children and Young People Department. She said that the number of stage 1 complaints had been decreasing and the time it had taken to respond to complains had improved vastly over the last three years. However, more cases had been escalated to stage 2 of the process, but fewer of them had been upheld. Service delay / failure had been the most common cause for complains in 2016-17 (same as in previous years). The Council’s Management Team (CMT) and Cabinet received reports on a quarterly basis and complaints were part of the regular discussions between Cabinet Members and lead officers. Irene Bremang (the Council’s Head of Performance and Improvement) added that although a high number of cases had been escalated to the Ombudsman, almost half of the complaints had been returned back without further consideration – for example, in 2016-2017, only 25 out of 170 cases had been upheld. Councillor McLennan said that responding to complaints had been a key priority for all departments and responses were strictly monitored to ensure the number of cases escalated to stage 2 and the Ombudsman was reduced. She noted that the number of complaints in the areas that fell under the remit of the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee had gone down.
Members of the Committee asked questions that related to the organisation’s attitude towards complains and the key lessons learned. Ms Bremang explained that there could be number of reasons for a complaint to be escalated to stage 2. She said that although a fair decision could have been made, residents had the right to request a review at the second stage and often decisions made at the first stage had been confirmed. Furthermore, some stage 2 complains were related to specific services, such as housing management, and action had been taken to address unsatisfactory performance, e.g. the service had been brought back in house. Ms Bremang added that lessons learned had been identified and included in the Complaints Action Plan, which had been agreed by Cabinet. Monitoring reports presented to CMT contained information about root causes and types of complaints as these could be related to processes, policies or service delivery. This allowed to identify issues to be addressed and enabled services to identify patters. Furthermore, Helen Woodland (the Council’s Operational Director, Social Care) referred to the services Brent had commissioned and said that sometimes complaints were related to providers, and, therefore, information from these was used to improve the commissioning process.
Ms Bremang explained that sometimes complaints could be a result of a decision that had been made and the way it had been communicated. In response to a request to provide a specific example, Gail Tolley (the Council’s Strategic Director of Children and Young People) said that a potential source of complaints against the Children and Young People Department was the fact that Children Social Services had to act in the interest of children which sometimes led to disagreements with parents. She spoke of a case when a child and family assessment had been sent to the parent who had been living with the child, which resulted in the other parent filing a complaint as they had not been notified. As a result, procedures had been changed to ensure that assessments were sent to all interested parties. In addition, as social workers made interventions in the best interest of the child, parents often described their dissatisfaction with the decision as bad staff attitude. Ms Woodland supported this view by saying that in cases related to the Adult Social Care Directorate, complainants often disagreed with a decision that had been made on a care package, i.e. people often thought that they should have received more than what they had been given under the statutory levels of provision. In contrast, there would be different underlying reasons for complaints against members of staff working in frontline services – for example, staff working at the Library Service often had to deal with challenging behaviours.
A Member of the Committee enquired how members of staff were allowed to suggest improvements to services and what extra training had been put in place. Helen Woodland (the Council’s Operational Director, Social Care) explained that managers took complaints very seriously and used some of them as case studies to be discussed at team meetings, with staff being encouraged to propose measures that would improve services and prevent problems. Ms Bremang pointed out that improvements would depend on the nature of the complaint and directed Members’ attention to Appendix A to the report which contained examples of specific complaints and measures that had been taken to prevent similar cases in the future. Councillor McLennan added that CMT had the put an emphasis on improving the culture of the organisation and this had been reflected in corporate induction and the Forward Together sessions.
A Co-opted Member of the Committee commended Ms Bremang’s team on the report and asked if data on changes on annual basis could be provided as part of the root cause analysis so it could be demonstrated that problems had been addressed. They also commented on the small number of complaints, including the ones related to staff attitude, and noted that training must have been embedded well across the organisation. However, it was noted that it would be helpful the next annual report to include more information on what constituted service delivery and failure to deliver a service.
Members discussed benchmarking with neighbouring local authorities. Ms Bremang said that this would be one of the issues that would be addressed by her team. She highlighted that it had been difficult to obtain comparable data, but she said that she expected benchmarking to be included in future reports. Furthermore, the Committee heard that it was not compulsory to collect ethnicity and equalities data. However, for certain types of complaints customers were willing to provide such information and a breakdown of data was available in Appendix A to the report (page 37 to the Agenda pack), but it had not been possible to identify any patters from it.
Members raised issues related to the IT system and the long waiting times experienced by residents who had tried to contact the Council by telephone. Councillor McLennan said that the local authority was aware of the problem and Cabinet had approved £5 million to be spent on upgrading the IT facilities, including the telephony services, of the Council. Dr Melanie Smith (the Council’s Director of Public Health) said that as a short term measure, the IT provision in libraries would be transferred to another server which was expected to improve access. However, it was pointed out that contacting the Council was part of the Customer Access Strategy which was managed by Brent Customer Services and it might be appropriate to examine it as part of a cross-committee task and finish group.
As part of the Complaints Action Plan, compensation arrangements had been reviewed to ensure that the Council’s corrective actions and compensations were in line with Ombudsman’s guidance. It was expected that this step would minimise the number of cases escalated to the Ombudsman.
Councillor Krupesh Hirani (Lead Member for Community Wellbeing) commented that the Council had to encourage feedback on services as often residents had not been given the opportunity to compliment the service they had received. However, it had to be acknowledged that by concentrating on receiving feedback, the number of compliments could increase.
RESOLVED that:
(i) The contents of the Complaints Annual Report 2016-2017 report, be noted;
(ii) The eight specific recommendations agreed by Cabinet on 23 October 2017 and set out as an Action Plan in Appendix D to the report, be noted;
(iii)The fact that Brent Housing Partnership (BHP) data was reported as a separate organisation to Cabinet in the annual report for 2016/17, be noted;
(iv)Future annual reports to reflect the change in BHP being brought back into Brent Council in October 2017 as the Housing Management Service within the CWB Department;
(v) The Community and Wellbeing Department, the Adult Social Care Directorate, the Culture Services, and the Children and Young People Department performance in managing and resolving complaints be noted;
(vi)Data on benchmarking of complaints against other local authorities be included in future annual complaints reports; and
(vii)Establishing a task and finish group with other overview and scrutiny committees to examine the Customer Access Strategy be considered.
Councillor Hirani entered the meeting at 7:23 pm during consideration of the above item.
Appointed Observer Ms Monteleone entered the meeting 7:55 pm during consideration of the above item.
Councllors Colwill, Hirani and Mili Patel left the meeting at 7:57 pm.
The meeting was adjourned between 7:57 pm and 7:59 pm for a comfort break.
Supporting documents:
- 06. Complaints Annual Report 2016-2017, item 8. PDF 245 KB
- 06a. Council Departments Complaints Analysis 2016-17, item 8. PDF 472 KB
- 06b. Adults Complaints Annual Report 2016-17, item 8. PDF 181 KB
- 06c. Children and Young People Complaints Annual Report 2016-17, item 8. PDF 168 KB
- 06d. Action Plan to Improve Complaints Performance, item 8. PDF 65 KB