Customer care and complaints

Our approach is about listening, responding and improving. By listening to your experiences, we can resolve mistakes faster, learn new ways to improve, and hopefully prevent the same problems from happening in the future.

• We will treat you with respect and dignity
• We will take your concerns seriously
• We will always try to sort out your concerns as quickly as possible
• We will make sure that you have adequate support

We expect the same levels of respect and dignity to be shown towards our staff.

We will not tolerate abusive or threatening behaviour towards any staff member. In the event of this taking place, we will consider limiting the contact received from that person(s). We expect our staff to end abusive or threatening calls after telling the caller they intend to do this.

From July 2016 all organisations providing health or adult social care have to comply with the Accessible Information Standard in relation to direct patient/service user care or services.

If you are happy with any part of the service you receive, then please tell us. Our staff can’t accept gifts, but if you want to recognise their work or to say thank you, then you can contact us as below, and we will record your views, and pass them on to the people involved.

If you have any concerns over any aspect of our services, or you wish to make any comments or suggestions on how we can improve, then please use the online form.

Although it may not always be possible to provide everything you want, by knowing about your complaints we can work together to try and put things right.

It is important that you let us know of your complaint as soon as it arises so it can be dealt with promptly. We may not be able to consider complaints made after one year of the event that gives reason for the complaint.

Our Complaints policy

Easy Read complaints leaflet: Tell Us What You Think

For complaints about Adults' Health and Care including:

• care at home: physical and learning disabilities
• older people
• residential and nursing care
• sensory issues: hearing loss and sight loss

Contact us:

We will acknowledge your complaint to confirm we have received it and a member of the Customer Care Team will contact you to clarify your complaint or discuss a plan of action to deal with your concerns if necessary.

This initial communication will normally take three working days. We aim to respond to complaints within 20 working days, but additional time may be required to investigate more complex complaints.

We will keep you informed of any delays in the process. You can expect your complaints to be:

• Listened to
• Be investigated fairly
• Responded to in full.

We will provide a clear written response to you and will share with you any improvements we intend to make.

If you are not happy with the response, you can ask the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) to review the way we have dealt with your complaint.

If we have not been able to resolve your complaint, please contact the Customer Care Team using the contact methods above to see if anything further can be done. However, if you are not happy with the response, you can ask the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) to review the way we have dealt with your complaint.

Anyone who funds their own care, including those using a direct payment, has the right to refer their complaints to the LGSCO.

To contact the LGSCO:

• Complete the online form on The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman website
• Call 0300 061 0614
• Write to Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, PO Box 4771, Coventry, CV4 0EH. Use the postal complaint forms on the complain to us by post page.

If you are not happy with the response, you can ask the LGSCO to review the way we have dealt with your complaint.

Our most recent complaints report:

Annual Complaints Report 2023-24