Agenda and minutes

There were no  declarations of interest.

(a)  To agree the minutes of the meeting held on 4^th February, 2019

(b)   Matters Arising

The minutes of the meeting held on 4 February, 2019  were agreed and signed as a true record. There were no matters arising.

Report of the Deputy Chief Executive (People)

The Cabinet Member considered a report of the Deputy Chief Executive (People) that reported on the Children’s Services social care complaints and representations annual report 2018/19.

There is a statutory duty for the Council to have a system for receiving representations by, or on behalf of, children who use the social care services they provide or commission; and for the Council to produce an annual report about the operation of the Complaints procedure.

The report presented the details of the comments, compliments and complaints for children’s services in 2018/19, this included both Statutory and Corporate Complaints which both follow a different process as outlined in the Complaints Handling Guidance 2018/19. It highlights the themes that arise from them and the learning and service improvements that have resulted from the feedback received.

Children services had 3284 open referrals as of 31 March, 2019. Between 1 April 2018 and 31 March 2019, there were 142 statutory complaints received about children’s services. The number of statutory complaints had decreased from 156 in 2017/18. In addition, there were 56 corporate complaints and 5 informal issues raised.

78 compliments were received in the year compared with 64 in 2017/18 and 91 in 2016/17.

28 complaints were made by children and young people themselves or from an advocate, the remainder were from adults. There had been an increase of children and young people using an advocate, 11 during 2018/19, compared to 11 in 2017/18 and 15 in 2016/17.

Two main themes continue to be identified as arising from the complaints by and on behalf of users in 2018/19; complainants reported being dissatisfied with communication and the standards of service provided.

Themes that emerged from the compliments were predominantly around the good standard of practice received from individual social workers and the overall standard of service received from teams. Currently, it was not possible to distinguish between compliments from children and young people themselves, or carers, or staff without manually going through every compliment. A selection of compliments from children and young people and families were included in the appendix to the report.

The children’s services comments, compliments and complaints annual report for 2018/19 was attached at Appendix 1 of the report and highlighted trends and the themes that had arisen from complaints and the learning and service improvements that had resulted from the feedback received. Appendix II of the report sets out the Council’s guidance for handling complaints was attached at.

The Cabinet Member acknowledged that whilst it was pleasing to see that the number of complaints had fallen, it was important to note that all service users should be encouraged to speak up if they were dissatisfied with any aspect of the service.

RESOLVED that the Cabinet Member approves the publication of the annual report in relation to complaints and representations in children’s services in 2018/19.

There are no outstanding issues

There were no outstanding issues.

There were no other items of public business.