Praise for Northumberland council's social care system after number of complaints falls

Northumberland County Council handled 45 complaints in 2022/23, compared to 57 in 2021/22.

Of those complaints, 30 were responded to – with the lower than usual number blamed on “unexpected and longer-term absences within the complaints service”. Seven of those complaints were upheld and 10 were partly upheld.

Cllr Wendy Pattison, cabinet member for adult social care, told a meeting of the health and wellbeing scrutiny committee: “We take all comments, complaints and compliments about adult social care very seriously. We can learn from them and improve our services.”

James Hillery, complaints manager for adult social care, added: “We have considerably more compliments than complaints.”

The figures showed that the council received 674 compliments for its adult social care and continuing healthcare services.

Director of adult social care, Neil Bradley, welcomed the figures – but added that it did not mean those complaints were not taken seriously.

He said: “When you look at the total population we deal with, which is in excess of 7,000 clients, there are hundreds of thousands of interactions between staff and clients, residents and their families.

“The complaints boil down to 45 and 10 or 12 ombudsman complaints. We take those complaints very seriously – the numbers are that small it is quite easy for us to do that.”

Cllr Georgina Hill, Berwick East ward, said: “The issue is mistakes happen – we all make mistakes and it is complex and heavy work – but the problem is when you don’t learn from complaints. Looking at these, there is one about adaptations to property not being correct. .

“There is at least one case I’m aware of where this has happened before to someone terminally ill who had to deal with that stress, which is appalling. There doesn’t seem to be very many complaints, but one or two are raising concern that they are still happening.”

Mr Bradley conceded that home adaptations was a frequent issue, but pointed out that the work was usually carried out by contractors.

He said the council would not work with contractors where service had been considered unacceptable.