Proposals to Transfer Complaints Panels to the Commission for Social Care Inspection – Throwing the Baby out with the Bath Water?

Abstract

This article considers proposed changes to the social services complaints procedure. The Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Act 2003 makes provision for complaints Panels to be taken away from local authorities. The suggestion is that in future the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) should be responsible for running all Panels. We argue that this proposal is not grounded in a satisfactory rationale, is not the best solution to any concerns about Panels and could lead to problems for all concerned: complainants, Panel members, complaints officers and the CSCI itself. Keywords: Social services; Complaints Panels; CSCI; Consultation proposals. IntroductionA crucially important policy change, which directly affects local authorities and the provision of social services, was contained in a Department of Health (DoH) The original underlying rationale for including social services complaints in the NHS reform plans was the desirability of making complaints which cross service boundaries between health and social services easier to handle. Thus the initial reason for amending the social services procedure had nothing to do with either the running or success of that procedure. It might therefore be assumed that, as the new NHS reforms do not, in fact, make detailed provision for such complaints, the plans 3 surrounding social services would be abandoned. However, this has not proved to be the case.publication Early objections to the proposalBack in 2001 there was no consultation with local authorities before the changes were proposed in the NHS document. On the proposals being published, objectors, who included complaints officers, Independent Persons and elected members, could not see any clear advantage to the changes. It appeared that the local authority process had been swept up in NHS reforms without sufficient thought being given to the consequences. On the issue of cross-border complaints, the reason for including social services in the first place, objectors argued that better ways of dealing with these could be achieved by other means, including regulations setting a framework for information-sharing and joint investigations.Local authority social services complaints procedures had also been the subject of consultation by the DoH and Listening to People -A Consultation on Improving Social Services Complaints Procedures came to a conclusion in June 2000. However, this document did not contain either a basis for, or a recommendation for, the change now proposed. Objectors therefore argued that there was no evidence, or other firm basis, in the DoH publications or elsewhere that the change would improve local authority handling of complaints. There was certainly no research basis for the change, although the DoH was aware of some very detailed research on the social services Panel process that was then being undertaken (see Ph.D by Katy Ferris, forthcoming) and it was suggested by the objectors that, if changes were to be made, then proper research should inform such changes...

Independence in complaints procedures: lessons from community care

“…Their findings indicate that, at this early stage in the development of the procedure, the role of the panels was not clear and was not consistent across authorities (Dean et al 1996). More recently, Ferris (2006) looked at the operation of the complaints review panel in England from the perspective of complaints officers and panel members, and concluded that review panels in England still varied from one local authority to another but that, despite this variation, they were better than the alternatives under consideration in 2005 (Williams andFerris 2005). While the research conducted by Ferris considers the value of the complaints review panel from the perspective of panel members and local authority complaints officers, very little research has considered the views of complainants.…”