Make a complaint about adult social care
We recognise that sometimes things go wrong. If they do, we want to hear your concerns and learn from them so we can improve our services and prevent future problems.
You can expect us to take your complaint seriously and give you a full response.
Our approach
Adult Social Care and the National Health Service (NHS) use a single approach to deal with complaints. It is an open and transparent process designed to ensure we can resolve problems with you quickly and easily. If your complaint involves both the NHS and the Council, you will get one coordinated response where appropriate.
Telling us about any problems is the first step in putting matters right. Do not be afraid to comment or complain; we need to know what you think about our services, especially if they are not being delivered in the right way. Please be reassured that complaining will not affect how the Council views you in any way and will not affect the services you receive.
Statutory Complaints Policy
View our Adult Social Care Statutory Complaints Policy.
Our complaints procedure aims to:
- Be open, accountable and fair
- Focus on you, the client
- Put things right
- Find ways to continually improve
We are committed to ensuring our policy is accessible to everyone and are happy to make any reasonable adjustments. If you require any reasonable adjustments, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Submit a complaint
Most complaints can be resolved by discussing your problem with a member of staff. If you are unhappy about a service or the way you have been treated, please contact the member of staff you are dealing with (or their manager) in the first instance. Do not be afraid to do so, it will not count against you in any way. If you know the name of the member of staff but not their telephone number, please contact us on 020 8871 7648.
We will normally only consider complaints about things which happened in the past 12 months. However, in some cases we may be able to consider complains outside of this period.
Ways you can complain
You can submit a complaint by:
- Speaking to a member of staff who works in the service you wish to complain about. If you know the name of the member of staff but not their telephone number, please contact us on 020 8871 7648
- Completing our online form
- Emailing us at adultscomplaints@wandsworth.gov.uk
- Calling us on 020 8871 7648 (if we cannot answer, you can leave a voicemail)
- Writing to us at Freepost RTKU EGLA ZZGT, Room 162, Wandsworth High Street, Wandsworth, London, SW18 2PU
Reasonable adjustments
Anyone needing support to access the complaints process can request reasonable adjustments (e.g., interpreters, accessible formats), and we will do our best to meet these needs. You can contact the Complaints team to make a request by emailing adultscomplaints@wandsworth.gov.uk.
Contacting us for other reasons
If you do not want to complain, but would like to make a comment or compliment, you can either tell someone who works in the service you have been dealing with, or email or telephone the Complaints team using the same contact details as for a complaint.
How we will deal with your complaint
If an early resolution has not been possible, your concerns will then be logged as a formal complaint and acknowledged within five working days. We will make every effort to resolve them quickly and effectively. We will appoint someone to investigate your complaint and they, or a member of the Complaints team, will contact you to agree with you the best way to reach a satisfactory outcome.
We will:
- Go through the reasons for your complaint, identifying each aspect of the complaint, to make sure that we understand your concerns properly. We would normally do this by phone or via email, but we are able to meet you if that suits you better
- Agree a complaint ‘plan’ if necessary, including how we will investigate your complaint and the time it will take. Our aim is to complete most complaints within 25 working days from when they are acknowledged, but some complaints may take longer to resolve
- Ask you what you would like to happen as a result of your complaint and tell you if we think this is realistic
- Ask you how you wish to be kept informed about the progress of your complaint, and make sure we contact you regularly – this can be by phone, letter, email or through a third party such as an advocacy or support service
- Provide you with a written response setting out the findings and outcome of the concerns you have raised, including any recommendations and actions for resolution. Where applicable, the response will also outline any learning identified for the Council as a result of your complaint
Lessons learned from complaints will help to improve services for other people - we want others to benefit from your feedback and prevent similar problems occurring. We want to listen, we want to respond, and most important of all, we want to improve the way we provide services and support to you. With your help, we can continue to maintain our high standards.
Taking matters further
If you have been through our complaints procedure and are still unhappy, you can ask the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman to consider your complaint.
The Ombudsman investigates complaints in a fair and independent way - it does not take sides. It is a free service. The Ombudsman expects you to have given us the chance to deal with your complaint, before you contact them. If you have not heard from us within a reasonable time, it may decide to look into your complaint anyway.
Unreasonable behaviour
We will do our best to resolve the issue as quickly as we can. If you become angry or impatient with our staff whilst making a complaint, or are unreasonably persistent in your contact, we reserve the right to make use of policy on Unreasonable Complainant Behaviour.