Bracknell care services gets public approval

The number of compliments paid to adult social care in Bracknell far outweighs the number of complaints, new statistics show.

Bracknell Forest Council’s adult social care and health department received just 37 complaints in the period between March 2010 and April 2011.

However in the same period the department received 136 compliments.

Of the 37 complaints, 22 were about standard of service, 11 were about communication and four were about access to services.

Two complaints were also taken to the Local Government Ombudsman – the council has responded to one, while the other is still in the correspondence stage.

Glyn Jones, director of adult social care and health at Bracknell Forest Council, said: “From April 2010 to March 2011 the adult social care and health department received 37 complaints.

“A breakdown of the complaints shows that nine out of 37 have come from people who are aged between 90 and 99.

“The reason for this is that the older people are, the more likely they are to require support, which can increase in complexity as people become frailer.

“To put these figures into perspective, we support approximately 3,500 people each year, ranging from one-off visits to on-going support up to four times a day.

“We do take all complaints seriously and have processes in place to share any learning from these incidents across the department.”

The second highest number of complaints came from people aged between 80 and 89 and 70 and 79, with six complaints coming from each age bracket.

Just three complaints were received by people aged between 18 and 29.