A report providing the Committee with an overview of Complaints, compliments, SARs activity and performance for Children’s Social Care for the period from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024.

The Committee received a report providing an overview of complaints, compliments, Subject Access Requests (SARs) activity and performance for Children’s Social Care Social Care for the period from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024.  Nayana George, Information Rights Services Manager, provided an overview to the Committee.

The report stated that over the period from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024 the service had received 75 statutory complaints, which was an decrease of 2 (2.6%) against the 77 received in 2022/23. To give context, in 2023/24, 3,003 children in total were referred into children’s social care, so the number of statutory complaints represents 2.5%. These referrals were regarding a mix of both new and existing children and young people. This compared to 2,843 referrals and 2.7% for 2022/23. Of the 75 complaints received 17 (13.0%) were resolved through alternative dispute resolution (ADR) by the social care teams.  The remaining 58 (87.0%) had progressed to a formal investigation, although one of these was subsequently withdrawn by the complainant once the investigation had commenced and 57 were investigated to outcome. The top complaint themes were quality of service provided or received, staff conduct and communication.

During the reporting period, 10 complaints progressed to a Stage 2 investigation.  Some of these related to Stage 1 complaints received in this reporting year, and some to Stage 1 complaints that had been received in the previous reporting year (2022/23).  There were also four cases that were reviewed by a Stage 3 review panel.

It was noted that both the Customer Relations Team, on Brighter Futures for Children’s (BFfC) behalf, and BFfC’s Communications & Compliance and HR/Training teams had continued to raise awareness of the complaints process with both staff and the public.

Between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024, the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman (LG&SCO) had received eight representations from dissatisfied service users for issues relating to BFfC. This was an decrease of 15 from the previous year.  Of the eight cases, the LGSCO assessed all eight and investigated two. One was upheld the other was awaiting a final outcome.   In respect of the one case upheld, the LGSCO asked the Council/BFfC to apologise, provide financial redress and improve the information about advocacy providers on the website. Of the remaining six cases, two were deemed premature and investigated by BFfC, the remaining four were all assessed but not investigated as they were either, not within the LGSCO’s jurisdiction to investigate or closed after initial enquiry/assessment.  There were no formal public reports issued in 2023/24.

During the same period a total of 50 compliments had been received.

The Customer Relations Team had processed all SARs requests for BFfC. These were open and closed children’s social care cases (historical cases where paper and microfiche files were held at the records centre) and Special Education Needs and/or Disabilities (SEND) cases. 

In 2023/24, the Customer Relations Team had received 75 requests for records, 16 more than the 59 requests received in 2022/23 relating to BFfC.  Of the 75 requests received 71 requests were completed. The remaining four cases were waiting to be processed as at the end of March 2024, this number would have altered by the time the report was presented at ACE.

The main reasons for the backlog were restrictions posed by the pandemic, move of paper records from Dawin Close to Bennet Road with restricted access and lack of resources to redact files. In all cases the Customer Relations Team and the Information Governance Team had kept in regular contact with requestors to ensure they were kept up to date on the progress of their requests. Extra BFfC resource had been deployed to help the Customer Relations Team clear backlogs, and the Council had purchased new software for the redaction work.

Resolved –

(1)           That the contents of the report and intended actions to further improve service delivery and the management of representations, particularly complaints, in children’s services in Reading be noted;

(2)           That the continuing work to raise awareness of all conflict resolution processes, including the statutory complaints process and encourage appropriate use by children, young people and their families be noted.