Ombudsman upholds four in five of complaints about adult social care where it conducts investigation in detail
The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) upheld 80% of all adult social care – including council delivered care – cases it investigated in detail in 2023-24.
In its Annual Review of Adult Social Care Complaints 2023-24, published today (26 September), the LGSCO said key areas of concern included delays in the assessment of people’s needs, and a failure to put people at the centre of the care they receive, instead fitting that care in with council and providers’ systems.
The watchdog said: “Poor communication with both clients and their families has also been an area of concern throughout the process, with particular issues around the information provided to service-users, and their families, being unclear or overly complex.”
It added that 99% of organisations complied with the remedies recommended to put things right.
Over the past year, the Ombudsman received 2,982 complaints about adult care, with just 333 of those being from people who fund their own care.
The LGSCO revealed that the number of complaints about privately funded and arranged care had dropped by 15%, following a “continued trend” over the past few years.
The watchdog noted that this number was “far lower” than it would expect given the sector’s proportion of the care market, and called for signposting to its services to be made mandatory at the end of every provider’s complaint process.
Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, Amerdeep Somal said: “People have a right to bring their complaint about adult social care to us, as the independent scrutineer. However, they don’t always know they can do so, and independent care providers should be signposting them to us, just as councils do. Independent care providers will often have both private and council-funded clients, and there should be the same route to redress however people’s care is funded.
“It is likely that low awareness of our role in privately funded and arranged care plays a part in creating this gap between the expectation and reality of the number of complaints we receive. Independent care providers are not required by law to signpost users to our service, and as it currently stands, we know it happens sporadically.
“As a result, people are potentially missing out on their right to access our services, and providers are missing out on the opportunity to learn from mistakes and to improve their services. We want the services provided by the care sector to be excellent across the board: we carry out our work to not only give individual redress but to improve services for everyone.”
Somal continued: “If all care providers were required by law to signpost to us it would give confidence that people know where to come with complaints and would support any suggestion that the drop in complaint numbers is caused by something other than a lack of awareness.”
Lottie Winson
