Making experiences count - implementation, one year on

15 April 2010

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The Independent Complaints Advocacy Service (ICAS) is available to all who have concerns about their NHS experience, but is not yet available, as of right, to people making complaints just about social care. Since 2003 when it was established, ICAS has supported a wide range of people to speak up about their concerns. ICAS can also provide independent experience about how complaints processes are working, and a number of NHS trusts are working with POhWER, as their local ICAS provider, to improve their complaints service.

Making Experiences Count, the new joint health and social care complaints process, came into effect in April 2009. The new arrangements aim to:

Inspire user confidence by facilitating effective complaints handling at local level, through speedier response times and a more unified approach to complaints that involve a number of services and organisations,

Encourage organisational learning and improve the patient experience

Provide a unified approach across all providers

Complaints generally show up inefficiency, ineffectiveness and failures in communications. They can suggest where services are not meeting needs, or where what is being offered is not in line with service user expectations. All of this information can help shape effective care pathways based around service user needs.

It is important that complaints procedures help to overcome rather than compound negative perceptions of public services. In our experience, the new complaints process offers a real opportunity for health and social care organisations to open up a dialogue with people who have a poor service experience. Where it works well, responses are quicker, more informal, and more responsive to complainants’ needs. They convey to the complainant a sense that they are valued, that their experiences count, that their concern is important and needs to be addressed quickly.

However, our experience is that many organisations have yet to fully implement the new process. A significant proportion have communication problems and many still need considerable support to navigate a complaints process that remains overly complex, rigid, under-resourced and, all too often, unresponsive.

But there are signs of change. More organisations are asking for assistance to support people whose needs and complaints are complex. We are also being approached to share our experience and/or to support our clients in sharing their experiences directly with service providers. We are helping to train front-line staff. Perhaps experiences are beginning to count.

Valerie Harrison, Chief Executive, POhWER

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