NHS and Social Care Complaints Report
Report Summary
Complaints about health and social care services must be handled in accordance with The Local Authority Social Services and National Health Service Complaints (England) Regulations 2009. The NHS Complaint Standards, published in December 2022, aimed to set out a single vision for what should happen when a member of the public makes a complaint about NHS services. Nationally, there has been a push towards making complaints processes easier with some areas of the country moving towards one complaints procedure across the entire Integrated Care System (ICS). For information about our local ICS, including its membership, visit https://www.shropshiretelfordandwrekin.ics.nhs.uk/
In addition to delivering local Healthwatch Services, Healthwatch Shropshire has been providing the Independent Health Complaints Advocacy service (IHCAS) since 2016. This means we often hear directly about people’s experiences of making a complaint. Some people have described the process as being confusing and disappointing, sometimes resulting in people deciding not to complain at all.
As the ICS includes Shropshire Council we decided to ask people to share their experiences and views of complaints handling across our health and social care services in the last two years.
Who we heard from
This report is based on the experiences of the 78 people who gave a full response to our online survey. (People were also given the chance to complete the survey either over the phone or face-to-face with a member of staff).
We asked people where they found information about complaints procedures:
Social Care Complaints
- 42.9% from the Council website
- 28.6% did not find any relevant information
NHS Complaints
- 37% from Patient Advice Liaison Service (PALS)
- 31.5% from Healthwatch Shropshire
- 22.3% from an NHS website
Which organisations people complained about
54 people made a complaint about an NHS service and 7 people had made a complaint about social care. 17 people considered making a complaint but didn’t, and gave various reasons, including feeling like it wouldn’t make a difference and thinking it may affect their future care and treatment.
NHS Providers people complained about
‘Other NHS’ services included:
- Connect Health Pain Management Services
- Shropshire Fertility Services
- Walsall Manor Hospital
How long people waited for a response during the complaints process
Waiting times for the complaint to be acknowledged as being received
- 36 people waited 4 weeks or less, 11 people waited over a month, 7 people did not know, and 4 people never received one.
- Of the 7 people complaining about social care one person had to wait longer than a month, five out of seven had their acknowledgement sooner.
Waiting times for a full response to the complaint (e.g. a written response or offered a meeting to discuss their complaint)
- Of the 59 people who answered, 21 had not yet received a response
- 15 people waited 1-3 months and 10 had waited 7-12 months
- Looking just at the 7 social care complaints, 3 people had received their response and all were received within 1-3 months of the complaint being made.
Organisation’s own deadlines being met
Organisations set their own deadlines within which they will respond to a complaint.
- Of the 38 people who answered, 5 told us they received a response by the deadline they were given
- 15 people told us the deadline was not met
- 12 people were not given a deadline
We asked if people were kept informed of progress; 27 people felt they were kept well informed during the process, 31 people felt they were not.
Complaints Responses
Complaints meetings
- 10 of 38 people who responded to this section were offered a complaints meeting, 21 people were not
- 5 people who were not offered a meeting said they would have liked to attend one
How they felt about the response they received
33 people told us about how they felt when they received a response to their complaint: 3 described positive reactions, 4 described mixed, and 26 people described negative reactions.
18 people told us the response was clear and easy to understand, 15 didn’t think it was.
18 people told us all the issues they had raised hadn’t been responded to, and 10 people felt it only partially answered the issues.
Preventing the problem happening again
5 out of 37 people said they had been told about steps the organisation had taken to prevent the incident raised from happening again.
30 out of 37 people felt ‘not confident at all’ or ‘not very confident’ that measures were in place to avoid the incident happening again.
Satisfaction Levels
Of the 37 people who answered if they were satisfied with the outcome of their complaint
- no-one said they were ‘very satisfied’;
- 21 people were ‘not satisfied at all’
- 6 people were ‘not very satisfied ‘
- 8 people were ‘neither satisfied nor dissatisfied’
- 2 people were ‘fairly satisfied’
Taking the complaint further
- 17 people did not take their complaint further
- 8 people did take their complaint further
- 8 people didn’t know they could have, but would have wanted to.
Sentiments of free text answers to our survey
The WordCloud illustrates the main sentiments expressed through free text responses throughout our survey.
Key Findings
- People told us that they didn’t feel that they were taken seriously or given proper attention, they described feeling ignored, ‘fobbed off’ or that their complaint was not taken seriously by those investigating it.
- People commented on the feeling that organisations were defensive in their approach to their complaint, mentioning a feeling of being ‘lied to’ or just apologised to without explanations.
- People told us about their experiences of using the complaints process and that they felt it was difficult to navigate or confusing.
- Delays were a key theme which many people told us they were concerned about.
- People told us about their dissatisfaction with the response they received to their complaint.
- People told us they did not feel confident that things would change or services would improve as a result of their complaint.
Downloads
Complaints information on GP websites - spotlight report
During this project it became apparent that the information given to patients by GP practices via their websites about the NHS complaints process was quite varied and in some cases incomplete and / or out of date.
We decided to ask a new staff member and a volunteer to assess the information they found on the 37 websites of the practices in Shropshire.
Spotlight Report Recommendations
We recommend that all practices revisit the information regarding formal complaints on their websites and ensure that:
- Information on how to make a formal complaint can be found quickly and easily on websites
- Information includes contact details for Healthwatch Shropshire who provide the Independent Health Complaints Advocacy Service for people living in Shropshire or using Shropshire NHS services
- The contact details for NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin are included as the commissioner of the service and it is clear that patients can make their complaint to them if they prefer.
- Information includes how to make a complaint and should allow for more than one communication channel. “You can make a complaint verbally, in writing or by email. If you make your complaint verbally, a record of your complaint will be made and you'll be provided with a written copy.” How to complain to the NHS - NHS (www.nhs.uk)
- Information on making a complaint is included on a main page within the website rather than as a separate document in Word or PDF format.
- Contact details and service information for the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) are included.
Downloads
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