Decision Report 201801693

Summary

Mr C complained that the partnership failed to handle his complaint properly and that they had not responded to his concerns about his child.

We found Mr C had made his complaint prior to 1 April 2017. This means that his complaint should have been progressed under the old social work complaints procedure with a Complaint Review Committee hearing as the final stage in the process. Although Mr C had evidence that he had requested that his complaint be escalated, this had not happened. We found that the partnership had incorrectly signposted Mr C to us (as per the new social work complaints procedure introduced from 1 April 2017). Therefore, we upheld this aspect of Mr  C's complaint.

We were unable to consider Mr C's second complaint as it had to have gone through the appropriate complaint process.

Recommendations

What we asked the organisation to do in this case:

• Apologise to Mr C for failing to handle his complaint reasonably. The apology should meet the standards set out in the SPSO guidelines on apology available at www.spso.org.uk/leafletsand-guidance.

In relation to complaints handling, we recommended:

• The partnership should allow Mr C to progress his complaint through the process that was in place prior to 1 April 2017.