Non-Statutory Process
A complaint that relates to Children’s Social Care but does not relate specifically to the provision of Social Care will be dealt with via the Council’s Corporate Complaints Policy, as a non-statutory complaint. This is a two stage process.
Stage 1
At Stage 1, the complaint will be investigated by the Head of Service with responsibility for the Service that is being complained about.
You will receive a written acknowledgement of your complaint within 5 working days of the date we receive it, confirming the concerns that are to be addressed. The acknowledgement letter will also advise you of the name and contact details for the Head of Service who will be dealing with the matter, and when you can expect to receive a response.
We will always aim to provide you with a full written response within 20 working days of the date your complaint was made. There may be some occasions when this is not possible, so we may need to extend the timescale slightly, but we will always ensure that you are kept updated about the timescale that we are working to.
The Head of Service will investigate your complaint, and will gather evidence to establish what actually happened in the case. The Head of Service may contact you to find out more information, or may invite you to a meeting to discuss your concerns further. This will enable them to make an assessment as to whether the correct process has been followed, and to consider whether any further action is required to resolve your complaint. The Head of Service will write to you setting out the findings of their investigation and any action that they will take to resolve matters.
We hope that we would be able to satisfactorily resolve your complaint at this stage of the process. However, if at the end of Stage 1 you remain dissatisfied, you can contact the Complaints & Customer Care Team and request that your complaint is escalated to the next stage of the process, Stage 2.
Stage 2
You can ask us to review your complaint at Stage 2 if you are unhappy with the response received from the Head of Service, or if your complaint has not been responded to by the date we committed to.
We would like the opportunity to be able to work with you, to look at any points from the Stage 1 investigation that you were not happy with and to attempt to find a suitable resolution to any issue raised.
To further investigate the matter at Stage 2 of the process, we will need to know:
- what part of the complaint you feel was not handled well at stage 1, or;
- what in your complaint response you disagree with, and;
- what further action you would like to be taken as a result of progressing your complaint.
We will always aim to provide you with a full written response within 20 working days of the date your complaint was acknowledged. However, there may be some occasions when this is not possible, so we may need to extend the timescale slightly, but we will always ensure that you are kept updated about the timescale that we are working towards
Any matters progressed to this stage will be investigated by the Assistant Director with responsibility for the Service that is being complained about; they will assess the whole case and look at how the complaint was managed at Stage 1. As part of this process a decision will be made whether it is felt that the Local Authority can take any further action, or alternatively if the original complaint decision is deemed to be correct and final.
Stage 2 is the last stage of the Local Authority non-statutory complaints process. If you remain dissatisfied with the response to your complaint at this stage, you can contact the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman for further advice.
You can find out more about the LGSCO here.