How to Make a Social Care Complaint
The Equality and Human Rights Commission has published findings from its latest inquiry into how older and disabled adults and unpaid carers can challenge local council decisions about social care support in England and Wales. You can read the findings in full here.
We've summarised the key points about how you can make a complaint if you feel social care services could have been better.
Informal complaint
An informal complaint can be a relatively quick way for someone to query an adult social care decision. People can discuss an issue informally with frontline social workers or other local authority staff. They can also write directly to their local authority’s director of adult social services or monitoring officer (usually the most senior lawyer in the organisation).
Formal complaint
The Local Authority Social Services and National Health Services Complaints (England) Regulations 2009 say all English local authorities must have a formal adult social care complaints system. But the law does not tell them exactly what form this should take. The first stage is local resolution but people can go straight to the second stage, formal investigation, if they choose to do so or if they are dissatisfied with the response at the first stage.
Involving an ombudsman
In England, people can complain to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) up to 12 months after a social care decision has been made. It is expected that all stages of the local authority’s complaint process have been exhausted first. The ombudsman can disapply the 12-month time limit.
Appeals
The Care Act 2014 allows a system for appeals against social care decisions to be set up, but this has not happened yet. In 2021, the UK Government announced that an appeal system was ‘under ongoing review as the new reforms are implemented and will continue to gather evidence to inform future thinking’. However, EHRC found a third of local authorities in England have established their own appeals system for some adult social care decisions.
Judicial Review
In England and Wales, people who are unhappy with a social care decision can legally challenge their local authority’s decisions or failures to act through a judicial review in the High Court, if there are grounds to do so. This looks at whether the decision was reached lawfully rather than looking at the merits of the local authority’s decision. A judicial review application must be lodged promptly and in any event within three months of the decision being challenged (though the High Court can extend the time limit at its discretion).
The case goes through a ‘permission stage’, where a judge considers if the claim is ‘arguable’. Then, if it is ‘arguable’, there is a ‘substantive stage’ where a judge hears the full legal arguments.
The whole process will generally take a number of months to conclude. A judicial review can proceed without someone going through the complaints process.
Pre-Action Protocol
The judicial review pre-action protocol is a good practice procedure setting out the steps the courts will expect someone to follow before making a judicial review claim. This protocol says a pre-action protocol letter must usually be sent to the local authority first. The letter explores what other ways of resolving the complaint there are and says what is required by the claimant to resolve the complaint without further (court) action.
