This month the Ombudsman’s findings highlight the importance of public bodies following guidance, policies and procedures, which are often in place to protect staff and service users.
We published decision reports from 18 complaints investigated by the Ombudsman. 12 of these were about the Health sector, five about Local Government, and one about Joint Health and Social Care. The outcome of these 18 complaints were:
- Fully upheld: 12
- Some upheld: 1
- Not upheld: 5
The Ombudsman has also published two public reports, which give details of two investigations which made significant finding. She has published these so that others can learn from the findings to prevent similar outcomes in the future.
Recommendations and feedback
We made 44 recommendations to public bodies. 25 of these were about steps public bodies could take to learn and improve from the complaint. A further 3 recommendations were about how complaints handling could be improved. One recommendation we made was for a public body to provide financial redress for funding that should have been received by the person affected.
Many of the recommendations we made to public bodies were with regards to how guidance, policies and procedures should be applied. Importantly, staff involved should be appropriately informed and trained on how to apply these in a specific situation. This can be critical in a health care setting where decisions impact on the care and treatment of patients.
We also highlight several recommendations which were made to ensure that staff in public bodies are aware of their organisations complaints handling procedure. Guidance on the Model Complaints Handling Procedure can be found on our website.
All our published decision reports can be read in full on our website.