Creating a learning culture in social care - what can we learn from local authority complaints reports?

Healthwatch England looked at what local authorities who have a responsibility for commissioning social care services, are learning from feedback and complaints.  They conducted a review of annual complaints reports.

The findings suggest that councils are not currently making the most of their annual complaints reports as an opportunity to demonstrate how responsive they are to feedback. 

• Reports are becoming less accessible to the public
  When Healthwatch England first reviewed local authority complaints reports in 2017, we were able to find reports online for half of the 152 councils in England. When we repeated the exercise in early 2019, we were only able to find them for a third of local authorities.

• Reports focus on numbers not learning
  In most reports we looked at, the emphasis was on the number of complaints received during the year and whether they were processed within the council’s agreed timeframes. Having more complaints than the previous year was often seen as a ‘worse performance’.

  In their current form, local authority complaints reports represent a missed opportunity for sharing learning about how to improve social care and demonstrating how people’s experiences can drive that improvement.

• Local government needs a more consistent approach
  When looking at local authority complaints reports, it is very difficult to compare like for like. There is no consistency in what they cover. The structure and even the taxonomy vary considerably between councils.