National Care Service - making sure your voice is heard: seldom heard voices co-design findings

What we learned - complaints and redress

1. A perceived complex and inaccessible complaints process stops people from making a complaint.

We heard some people believe it is not worth their time to make a complaint. This is because they feel it will be too complicated or no action will be taken as a result.

We learned some groups of people might experience extra barriers to making a complaint. People from the Gypsy and Traveller community talked about not wanting to cause “a fuss” because of stigma they may experience due to their background. Some people talked about being afraid to make a complaint because of cultural differences or having an insecure immigration status.

Other points around this included:

• some people with dementia do not want to complain and many “just get on with it” because they feel that complaining will not make things better
• people with dementia talked about needing support from a third party to make a complaint, usually a close family member, due to the nature of their condition
• people accessing social care support said they were not given accurate timelines for dealing with their complaint, or kept up to date when those timelines changed
• people said it is important to have transparency at every step of the journey
• there is a need for equal and accessible information on making a complaint

Here are some of the things people said during our discussions:

“The thing that stops me from making a complaint is not knowing where to complain, I don’t always know” - Glasgow Disability Alliance session participant.

“There needs to be better structure and mechanisms to updating us on the process - let us know the timescales, even if they have changed and will take a while” – Glasgow Disability Alliance session participant.

How we will use this

We will consider how different health conditions and circumstances can affect people in accessing the complaints system, and how to make sure it is accessible to all. We will also consider how to make sure people get clear, accessible and accurate information about making a complaint.