We are urging all care providers in England to ensure their complaints processes meet basic standards, after we found a medium-sized provider had no procedure when investigating a family’s complaint.
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Understanding our processes
How do we deal with complaints?
Complaints we receive can pass through up to three stages. These are known as intake, assessment and investigation.
You can find more information about how we deal with complaints on our website. This information is currently targeted at local authorities but is still relevant. We have plans to introduce a version for care providers later in the year.
Top tips for providing a response to our enquiries
We generally work paper-free and we expect organisations to provide information electronically, unless there are exceptional circumstances.
The investigator dealing with the complaint will be happy to answer any queries or questions you have.
It is helpful if you:
- Respond by the deadline we give you. This is usually four weeks, but may be less if we only want one or two documents. If you cannot meet the deadline, please contact us as soon as possible and we can usually allow more time.
- Provide documents in date order. Ensure photocopies which have been scanned are legible.
- Avoid providing duplicates like email chains containing the same email.
- Provide documents in named PDF bundles so it is easy for us to identify what is in each bundle.
- Provide responses to any queries or questions the investigator has in a separate covering letter. You can also provide any other relevant comments you wish in this letter.
- Bear in mind that we share copies of evidence and information we rely on with complainants. For this reason, we ask that you think carefully about the tone and language you use when communicating with us in writing. Please use our staff’s title and surnames when writing to them. This is important so we maintain impartiality. Please also take care when describing complainants. Assume that they will see what you have written.
- Please do not provide any information that we have not requested. We will delete irrelevant information and may ask you to re-supply it in a better form.
- Take note of the size limit we will accept. Large bundles may need to be separated and sent in numbered emails.
Remember we have the same powers as the High Court when we request information. We can issue witness summons which require you to provide information. This is rarely necessary and we prefer working cooperatively with the organisations we investigate.
How do we make decisions?
If we decide not to carry out a detailed investigation and close the complaint we will usually write to you with a decision statement explaining our reasons.
If we carry out a detailed investigation, the investigator will send you and the complainant a draft decision. This is our provisional findings on the complaint and will say whether we are proposing to uphold it or not. We may make recommendations of actions you should take to put things right and prevent similar fault occurring in future. These will be set out in the draft decision statement.
Top tips for responding to draft decisions
- Ensure any staff and contractors involved in the complaint read a copy of the draft decision and have a chance to respond with any factual inaccuracies or any additional relevant information.
- Refer to the paragraph numbers in the statement.
- Ensure you respond to the draft decision within the timescale the investigator has given. This will usually be two weeks. We can extend this, but please ask for an extension as soon as possible.
- Say whether or not you accept the draft recommendations. If you do not accept a recommendation, please tell us why.
- Tell us if you think the deadlines we are proposing for completion of the draft recommendations are unrealistic. It is better to say at this stage, before the case is closed, rather than waiting until after we issue a final decision.
- If you agree to take the recommended action, subject to comments from the complainant, we will close the case and follow up with you to check you have completed everything. We will then issue a letter saying we are satisfied, but only when we have decided all the agreed actions have been completed.
Adverse Findings Notices
We have the power to issue an Adverse Findings Notice where:
- We do not hear from a care provider after we have issued a final decision with recommendations; or
- We are not happy with the action a care provider has taken or proposes to take.
It is rare for us to issue a Notice and we will generally only do so if a provider has failed to comply fully with our recommendations.
We will normally expect the care provider to publish an Adverse Findings Notice in a local newspaper and we also place a copy on our website.
We will share a copy of a draft Adverse Findings Notice with you before we issue a final notice. This is a chance for you to comment and provide us with any additional information and to say whether you will take the action we have recommended.
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