Report highlights reduction in children's social care complaints and increase in adult social care compliments

The Statutory Social Care Complaints and Customer Feedback Report for 2021/22, which was recently published on the council's website, gives an overview of customer feedback, complaints and compliments.

There was good news about the number of children's social care complaints. Following a reduction due to the Covid pandemic in 2020/21, children's social care complaints continued to reduce, falling by 15% in 2021/22.

In adult social care, complaints have increased slightly, but overall totals are still less than in pre-pandemic years. There is also positive news as compliments increased by 7% from 616 in 2020/21 to 659 in 2021/22.

The overall numbers of statutory county council complaints for adult and children's social care received by the Ombudsman decreased by 11% from 99 in 2020/21, to 89 in 2021/22.

Lancashire County Council takes all complaints very seriously and uses them as an opportunity to improve its services and processes.

County Councillor Cosima Towneley, cabinet member for children and families, said: "It's tremendous that the number of complaints in children's social care has reduced, especially following the earlier downward trend from 2020/21.

"This reflects the fantastic work the service continues to offer and our ability and agility in improving processes to ensure children, young people and their families who use our service have the best support.

"We welcome all feedback about our services and always take complaints seriously. Where complaints are upheld we are keen to learn so that our service is kept ready and relevant."

County Councillor Graham Gooch, cabinet member for adult social care, added: "I'm pleased that the number of compliments we have received has increased. This means that more people have complimented our service than complained about it in 2021/22.

"There was a slight increase in complaints, mostly due to our communications processes, and we are working to improve this.

"However, the report is still very positive. Continuous improvement is key and we are investigating all complaints very seriously to ensure we provide the very best adult social care services across Lancashire."

The report will be discussed by cabinet, which has the opportunity to comment on the document at its meeting on Thursday 1 December.

You can read the full report by searching for item 15 via the following link – Cabinet - Thursday, 1st December, 2022