Agenda item

The 2017/18 Complaints Annual Report was presented to Cabinet on 10 December 2018. This version of the paper focuses on complaints performance in the Community Wellbeing Department - Adult Social Care directorate and Culture service and complaints performance in the Children and Young People Department. 

Councillor McLennan (Deputy Leader, Brent Council) introduced the Complaints Annual Report 2017-18 and explained that the version presented to the Committee focused on complaints performance in the Community and Wellbeing Department (Adult Social Care directorate (ASC) and Culture Service) and the Children and Young People Department (CYP). It was noted that complaints concerning social care in Adult and Children services came under separate statutory complaint procedures and separate summary reports had been provided in Appendices A and B respectively (pages 47 and 57 respectively of the Agenda pack), with an overview report on complaints performance set out in Appendix C (page 69 of the Agenda pack). Councillor McLennan stressed that there had been an overall decrease in the number of complaints and challenges associated with response times had been addressed successfully. She commented that the Council’s performance had been affected by the reduction of funding available from central government which, in some cases, had led to reductions in staff numbers. However, the risk that this would lead to an increased number of complaints had not materialised as the Council had been focused on resolving issues early on. Irene Bremang (Head of Performance and Improvement, Brent Council) highlighted that overall performance in the Community and Wellbeing Department (CWB), CYP and the Culture Service had been strong with the number of complaints being low in comparison to the rest of the Local Authority.  Ms Bremang said that despite the noticeable improvement in the timeliness of CYP Statutory Stage 1 cases, the timeliness of Stage 2 complaints remained below target. However, it should be taken into account that the volume was low and most of these complaints were very complex so resolving them in a timely way could be challenging.

The Committee heard that the Complaints Service Team worked closely with the Council Management Team and Department Management Teams to provide them with regular feedback on performance and to implement lessons learned. Ms Bremang reminded Members that last year’s report contained eight specific recommendations to Cabinet which had informed the development of an Action Plan. The current paper set out measures that had been taken to implement these (for more details please see paragraph 3.6 of the report (pages 44-45 of the Agenda pack)).   

Members welcomed the report and commented on the fact that the number of complaints received by ASC in 2017/18 (97) had remained unchanged from the previous year. Phil Porter (Strategic Director of Community Wellbeing, Brent Council) explained that the figure had to be considered in context of an increased number of service users which indicated that performance had improved in real terms. He assured Members that all complaints had been carefully examined and responses had been issued on time in the majority of cases (95% of Stage 1 complains had been responded on time).

A specific question that was raised related to amount of money paid in compensation and mentioned in the report. Helen Woodland (Operational Director, Social Care, Brent Council) highlighted that £12,500 of the total £13,945 compensation paid for the year was a refund of care charges that the family of a service user had paid. The ASC directorate would have spent this money anyway so the actual compensation accounted for £1,445 which constituted a reduction in comparison to previous years.

In response to a question whether processes had been changed as a result of complaints, Ms Bremang said that learning and improvement would depend on what had gone wrong. For instance, a specific theme had been customer service in some areas. These types of complaints were usually addressed by giving information back to services who could organise training for officers as necessary. In other cases customers would disagree with policies and procedures that had been put in place which often meant that these had to be reworded to improve the way the Council communicated its decisions to residents. In fact, Ms Woodland said that a number of Adult Social Care related complaints had been escalated because service users were disagreeing with what they had been allocated.

Gail Tolley (Strategic Director of Children and Young People, Brent Council) referred to the Learning from Complaints section of Appendix B (page 67 of the Agenda pack) which provided examples of learning points that had been implemented, leading to service area changes. She emphasised that social workers made interventions that were in the best interest of the child, however, families did not always agree with the action that had been taken and could choose to make a complaint about this. In a similar way, the most common reasons for complaints against staff members were when parents disagreed with a decision that had been made in the interests of the child. Moreover, there had been complaints related to the fact that social care services had not communicated a decision to one of the parents (usually not living in the family home).

The Committee discussed the importance of communicating decisions to service users and their families. Members noted that issues related to miscommunication had been a regular theme in complaints reports and asked what administrative tools would be utilised to address such problems. Ms Woodland pointed out that learning from each complaint had had been implemented in the best way possible and added that although there was not a systemic issue in the way social workers communicated, a more refined complaints system had to be implemented in order to differentiate individual issues and wider problems. Gail Tolley said that as a result of lessons learned, guidance had been issued to social workers and their managers advising them that information about a child’s assessment had to be sent to all parties entitled to see it at the same time, including parents and adults the child was residing with at the time.  

Councillor Harbi Farah (Lead Member for Adult Social Care) raised the issue of unrecorded complaints and said that residents often contacted him with specific issues that he passed on to officers. Gail Tolley acknowledged that there were cases of ‘individual’ complaints, i.e. she had received emails from care leavers who had not been satisfied with the entitlements that they had been allocated and the support that they had requested. Nevertheless, this was a positive feature as it showed that young people felt confident to challenge decisions made about themselves. This view was supported by Members who claimed that complaints should not be seen as an issue as they reflected the ability of some of the most vulnerable people in the Borough to feel empowered and engage with the Local Authority. As far as proactively seeking feedback on the service delivered was concerned, Councillor Mili Patel (Lead Member for Children's Safeguarding, Early Help and Social Care) informed Members that care leavers had an opportunity to engage with the Council via the Corporate Parenting Committee which discussed a wide range of issues among which were entitlement and support.

RESOLVED:

(i)    The contents of the Complaints Annual Report 2017-2018, be noted;

(ii)  The Committee noted that Cabinet had approved the 2017-18 Complaint Annual Report, including the progress update on the Improvement Action Plan; and

(iii)The Committee noted the Community and Wellbeing Department and the Children and Young People Department performance in managing and resolving complaints.

Councillor Farah (in attendance) and Councillor McLennan (in attendance) left the meeting at 7:42 pm.