The way we work Compliments and complaints

We want to hear your feedback, both good and bad, on the care and support services we provide.

Passing on a compliment

Our colleagues are passionate about what they do. We’re always grateful to hear when you’re happy with our services, as your compliments help us work towards getting it right first time, every time. You can let us know when we do things well by getting in touch with our Care and Support Quality team. 

If you’re unhappy

If things haven’t gone so well or we’ve made a mistake, we want to know. 

We’re committed to handling complaints in an open and transparent way. We want you to trust us to acknowledge if we’ve got things wrong and know we’ll take steps to make things right. 

If you are dissatisfied with a care or support service you’ve received, please let us know so we can put it right as soon as possible. We’ll say sorry when we need to and learn from our mistakes.

Our complaints procedure

You can contact us about your complaint however you’re most comfortable – in person to any of our team, by email or by phone. 

Our local service managers are often best placed to resolve your issue quickly. Alternatively, you can email your complaint to our Care and Support Quality team if you’d prefer to raise the matter independently of the service. 

We’ll acknowledge your complaint within five working days. We’ll confirm the action we’ll take and let you know who the investigating officer will be. 

We will also inform you of the proposed response date, which will normally be within 10 working days unless we need to agree an extension with you.

If you’re not satisfied with the outcome, your complaint will be reviewed by someone not involved in the stage 1 response. This is known as a stage 2 complaint. Your stage 2 complaint will be acknowledged within five working days. You’ll receive a response within 20 working days of the acknowledgement unless we agree an extension together.

Help from external organisations

Our stage 2 review is the end of our internal process. If you remain dissatisfied, our stage 2 outcome letter will let you know how you can contact the relevant ombudsman. You do have the right to contact the relevant ombudsman before this point though.

Complaints relating to the delivery of social care services can be referred to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

For housing-related complaints, where we are your landlord, you can take your complaint to the Housing Ombudsman Service. 

If you receive a care service from us that is regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), you also have the right to contact CQC. Although CQC will not investigate individual complaints, they will use the feedback to link into how they monitor and inspect our services.

Using your feedback to improve our services

We always want to understand when things have gone wrong and why. We regularly review complaints and use your feedback to help us continually improve our services.