Agenda item

Consideration was given to a report of the Corporate Director, Adults, Wellbeing and Health, the primary purpose of which was to detail the performance of Durham County Council’s Adults, Wellbeing and Health Statutory Adult Social Care Complaints Procedure. The report also included details about the compliments and comments received from service users and carers during the year (for copy see file of Minutes).

The Strategic Manager and the Team Manager, Adults, Wellbeing and Health, were both in attendance to present the report. The Strategic Manager began by advising that the Regulations which govern the adult social care complaints arrangements were changed from the 1^st April 2009 as such the report was the service’s  second Annual Report to be presented reflecting those changes.

The Strategic Manager drew attention to key areas within the report. The report outlined the processes and standards which the service was required to follow to ensure the management of adult social care representations was robust.  For each individual complaint, a Complaint Resolution Plan was negotiated direct with the complainant and within that timescales and expected outcomes were agreed ensuring a customer focussed service.  

The Report provided information relating to the number of complaints in comparison to the number of contacts made with service users. Although as a proportion at 124 that was small, it did not mean that the information gathered was any less meaningful and did not result in improvement within the Service.

Information on whether complaints were well-founded was outlined in the report, indicating that 65 (56%) of the complaints were not upheld compared to 21(35.5%) in 2009-10. That showed more than a 20% decrease in the number of complaints where the issues raised were well founded.

The Strategic Manager advised that under the new standards of the legislation, the Service no longer worked to fixed timescales for completing complaints. The Services’ average over the 116 complaints completed was 16 working days and 100% of those complaints were within the agreed timescales which had been set with the complainant in the Complaints Resolution Plan.   

The Strategic Manager highlighted the outcomes of the positive joint working as required by the new legislation where complaints regarding both health and social care services were effectively managed together ensuring the complainant received one response from both organisations.

She advised that 2010/11 had seen a sharp rise in the number of complaints received for the first time since 2006-07 and she drew attention to the area of the report which detailed the remedies which had been applied and the learning outcomes which had been gathered from the complaints, which had led to improvement within the Service.

The report also provided details on the services performance with regard to compliments and comments received in the Service and the Strategic Manager highlighted that the number of compliments had continued to rise with a 43% increase from the previous years performance.

In concluding, the Strategic Manager was pleased to report that the adult social care procedure which was focussed on a more personalised approach to complaints, was working effectively.

Mrs D Balmer raised concerns regarding the rise in the number of complaints, particularly as many of those complainants were from two of the most vulnerable groups. Also she expressed concerns as the category which generated the majority of the complaints had been “Conduct or Attitude of Staff.” The Team Manager clarified that many people were disappointed with the outcome of assessments, having been unsuccessful on the grounds of eligibility. She advised that the explanations might not always be clear as such it was not the attitude of the staff which was the issue but more the manner in which they communicated. This was recognised as an area for improvement and work was being done to try to resolve the issues.

The report detailed that the service had adopted the Regional Quality Band Assessment in respect of Care Homes and Care Homes with nursing for older people for contract monitoring of the independent sector. As such providers would be measured against a number of evidence based measures within many domains, one of which related to complaints. The report stated that such work was in the early stages of development and more details on performance would be provided in the next years Annual Report. Councillor Carr queried whether updates could be provided sooner than that. The Team Manager advised that the plan was to show a whole years analysis, however a mid term progress report would be provided for members.

Resolved:

That the report be noted.