National Care Service - complaints co-design: findings summary

Research and engagement - what we learned

Our research and discussions with stakeholders have helped us understand the existing arrangements for making a complaint about social care, social work and community health.

We have found that making a complaint can be very hard for some people. There are various oversight bodies, professional regulators and commissioners that can consider complaints issues. Understanding the roles and remits of different bodies is complicated, and there is some overlap in what they do. This can lead to delays in progressing the complaint.

Our research also found that:

• the different ways to complain are hard to understand
• there are different ways to make complaints about social work, social care and health care (including community health)
• there is a separate process for raising concerns about individual professionals’ fitness to practice
• there is not a standard complaints procedure that private care providers have to follow
• there are local differences in how complaints about integrated services (joint health and social care delivery) are managed

It is clear more work is needed to support people to understand and navigate the complaints landscape and complaints processes.