Care staff and public encouraged to raise concerns

The Care Inspectorate has announced a new streamlined system for investigating complaints against registered care services, including care homes, care at home services and a wide range of social care services.

It will streamline the time it takes to rule on complaints, reduce the numbers of steps in the process and make the results of complaint investigations easier to understand.

The new system aims to bring the Inspectorate into line with Scottish Public Services Ombudsman’s guidance and a broad range of improvements to the current system have been detailed. These include:

• Aim to investigate and rule on complaints within 20 working days, reduced from the previous 28 working days limit (people will be notified of any extensions required by more complex cases).
• A simpler, three-stage process will be less bureaucratic and easier for all complainants to understand.
• A simpler set of possible outcomes from complaints, with all complaints either ‘upheld’ or ‘not upheld’. It will no longer be possible for a complaint to be ‘partially upheld’.
• A new ‘error response’ process will give those services that are the subject of a complaint the opportunity to challenge any points of factual accuracy before a complaint is formally resolved.

While there will be many changes, the Inspectorate say they will retain the key strengths of the existing approach, including the ability to make anonymous complaints and the UK’s only telephone line for raising concerns and making complaints.

Commenting on the new approach, Care Inspectorate Director Gill Ottley, said: “We want everyone, from members of the public and people who use services, to staff and carers, to feel they can raise any concerns they have about the quality of services and know they will be investigated thoroughly and as speedily as possible.”

To find out more, visit: http://www.scswis.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7569&Itemid=369