Agenda item

The Board will consider the Complaints and Compliments for Children in Care Annual Report.

Contact:

Sara Miles, Head of Service (Resources, Improvement and Partnership)

Anna Gledhill, Service Manager (Quality Assurance and Safeguarding)

The Board considered the Complaints and Compliments for Children in Care Annual Report presented by Tom Brailsford, Service Director (Resources, Improvement and Partnerships) who gave an overview of the report and highlighted that:

·       The report related to complaints and compliments made by Foster Carers, Children Looked After (CLA) and Care Leavers under the statutory complaints procedure within the Children Act 1989.

·       The statutory complaints procedure included three stages:

o   Stage One: Complaints should be responded to by the relevant responding manager within 10 working days (automatic extension of a further 10 working days where necessary.

o   Stage Two: Implemented when a compliant was dissatisfied with findings at stage 1 and involved an independent investigation usually conducted by an independent person appointed to the investigation.

o   Stage Three: At this stage the Local Authority was required to establish a Complaints Review Panel (made up of 3 independent panel members) to make recommendations to the Service Director who would decide on the complaint and any action to be taken.

·       Most complaints were resolved either at stage 1 which showed the effectiveness of the restorative approach.

·       It was important to make sure that key learning points arising from complaints were reported back to the Quality Assurance Panel and analysed.

·       Key objectives were to ensure responses to complaints were made in a timely manner using clear and understandable language; to ensure that positive feedback was collated and shared to enable learning from best practices; and to improve the feedback loop from complaints to facilitate learning from children and families’ experiences of services. 

The Board highlighted that the compliments showed that the approaches taken to service delivery were effective in many ways. The Board also noted the importance of understanding and learning from positive feedback to share best practices and learning from any complaints was equally as important.

The Board were pleased to note that most complaints were dealt with within the statutory timescales but asked about the process for where there was a delayed response and if there was an independent review undertaken.

Tom Brailsford advised that where a response to a complaint was delayed that it was sent to a Head of Service/Strategic Director for analysis which ensured a level of independence. Further to this, in progressing through the stages of the statutory procedure a complaint would be reviewed by different Managers maintaining independence.  In response, the Board were satisfied that the approach used the correct balance of internal oversite and independent review. 

The Board noted that reducing the delay in implementing the policies was essential to reducing foster carers concerns around finances.

In response to a question from the Board about the timeliness of implementing staying put arrangements for Foster Carers, Ophelia Rix agreed that it was important to make sure that early conversations about staying put arrangements took place and advised that there were plans to address the challenges in implementing the policy such as maintaining communication with staff through regular briefing sessions and setting clear expectations of timescales. It was anticipated that there would be a reduction in concerns as the implementation of the policy progressed.

RESOLVED: The Board noted the Complaints and Compliments for Children in Care Annual Report,and it was agreed that a meeting be arranged with the Kirklees Fostering Network about the implementation of the staying put arrangements.