Agenda item

To consider details of Adult Social Care complaints upheld by the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO).

PART A – To consider a public report by the LGSCO following an investigation into an Adult Social Care complaint.

PART B – To consider an overall overview of Adult Social Care complaints.

Cllr Connor explained that this item would be heard in two parts:

PART A – To consider a public report by the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) following an investigation into an Adult Social Care complaint.

PART B – To consider an overall overview of Adult Social Care complaints.

Part A

In relation to Part A, Cllr das Neves noted that this item had been reported to Cabinet in November 2025 and summarised the key points as follows:

• The Council recognised the seriousness of the LGSCO’s finding in this case, accepted responsibility for the errors and apologised unreservedly for this.
• The issues reflected historic practices in the Council that had changed since the events that were investigated.
• The backlog of emails had been cleared and the Council now seeks to triage all concerns that come into the inbox within 48 hours.
• Additional staff training on the handling of complaints had taken place.
• An Adult Social Care Improvement Plan was in place which responded to separate issues raised by the CQC.
• A recent letter had been provided by the LGSCO following the Council’s response to them which confirmed the LGSCO’s view that the remedy had been satisfied on time. A redacted version of the letter could be provided to the Panel if required.
• An external review had been commissioned which would verify that the Council’s practice had now improved.

Cllr das Neves, Sara Sutton and Jo Baty then responded to questions from the Panel:

• Cllr Connor requested further details about the current triaging of safeguarding emails, the involvement of social workers and timescales for follow up actions. Jo Baty explained that a short-term solution was currently in place until the safeguarding review reported in January. At present, any safeguarding email that came in was triaged, risk assessed and referred to the most relevant team. Where concern related to a specific resident, this may be directed to the locality team where the resident lives. Other concerns may be related to a service provider.
• Asked about capacity in the locality teams to take on the volume of safeguarding referrals, Sara Sutton said that there was an important distinction to make between safeguarding concerns and care and support needs. The latter would be allocated to a locality team and this could, for example, involve a review of the care and support plan for the resident. If a genuine safeguarding concern had been raised, relating to abuse or neglect for example, then immediate protective measures would be put in place. In some cases, further work would be required to establish the facts. Jo Baty commented that adult social care involved the constant assessment of risk. In terms of capacity, she said that this was a real pressure, particularly in relation to additional demand in the east of the Borough. The service had been fortunate to have been allocated additional funding for staffing and there were new posts to manage risk, including a post on forensic mental health. More training had been put in place and new governance arrangements included a weekly safeguarding team meeting. She added that the new internal review may provide further evidence on capacity issues and all of the priorities identified through the Adult Social Care Improvement Plan were relevant to safeguarding.
• Cllr Connor asked further about capacity to deal with changing care and support needs, pointing out that a review could be urgent to prevent harm if a resident’s needs had changed. Jo Baty said that extra capacity had recently been built in to support carers, including the Care Act Assessments. She added that increased future use of AI to support Care Act Assessments was relevant to freeing up capacity.
• Asked by Cllr Connor about the current backlog of Care Act Assessments, Jo Baty responded that there would always be waiting lists in this area and that she could provide data on this to the Panel in writing. (ACTION)
• Cllr Connor queried whether any harm had been identified that had resulted for the delays from the unread emails. Jo Baty said that this had pre-dated her appointment to her role but that she was not aware of any cases being escalated as a consequence of the backlog.
• Cllr Brennan expressed concern about the difficulties with triaging complex cases accurately and said that this often required a high level of expertise. Jo Baty said that the Council used a case management system to track cases including complex cases in contact with other services. Sara Sutton added that there was a quality assurance process involving case file audits to further support this process.
• Cllr O’Donovan asked about the pressures that staff were under, given the high levels of demand and the need to meet defined safeguarding timeframes. Jo Baty agreed that this was an important point and that staff needed to feel protected so that difficult situations could be resolved by working together. Her view was that services without this level of support could involve greater risk of a culture of people hiding issues and concerns. The leadership of the service was working to encourage a culture of openness and honesty and to raise concerns with their managers.
• Sara Sutton commented that the issues investigated by the LGSCO had been an opportunity for learning and reflection. There had been extensive conversations about the case files and she also reported that the incident had resulted in some HR processes. There had also been conversations about the future shape of the service which had been informed by some work from an external organisation which had involved multiple engagement sessions with staff. This informed the ongoing work on front door transformation and digital improvements that was expected to brought forward in Q1 of 2026/27 and was unpinned by the workforce development strategy.
• Cllr Iyngkaran queried what system was now used to ensure that emails were not missed. Jo Baty explained that there were clear email addresses for each team so that emails were not misdirected and delayed. A small working group had also been established to monitor how many emails were being received each week and how they were being managed. Sara Sutton added that a technology solution was being introduced that would enable the emails received to automatically interface with the case management system. Cllr das Neves commented that stronger oversight was important to act as a check and balance against human error while the external review would help improve understanding about what the service could do differently.
• Asked by Cllr Connor if there were any issues of concern on the LGSCO Action Plan Tracker, Sara Sutton reported that the only outstanding issue was the reporting of the external safeguarding policy review which would not be completed until early 2026. However, the LGSCO was satisfied that these arrangements were in place.
• Cllr Opoku queried why the final action on providing evidence to the LGSCO was still marked ‘in progress’. Sara Sutton explained that this was because the report in the agenda pack was the report had been provided to Cabinet in November and pre-dated this action being completed.
• Cllr Connor requested that the Scrutiny Panel be informed at an earlier stage when issues of concern arose. Sara Sutton said that, on reflection, when the outcome of the LGSCO report outcome was known there was an opportunity to provide a briefing to the Panel which should have been taken. She added that the service dealt with many cases of complexity and so there was a judgement call to be made when there were wider issues of risk that would be within the remit of the Panel.

Part B

Kirsten Webb, Resolutions & Feedback Manager introduced the report on Part B, highlighting the following points:

• The service was on a journey of improvement in managing and learning from complaints. While response times were important, it was equally important to resolve issues and not just to respond.
• The feedback team had a role to play in triaging complaints more effectively and to be part of a holistic approach to handling complaints.
• Historically, the service had worked to a 10-working day response timeframe, but trying to meet this deadline could mean that the complaint was not resolved so it was necessary to reflect on what service provision should look like.
• An increase in approaches to the LGSCO had been seen corporately and not just in relation to Adult Social Care so this had informed the improvement plan.

Kirsten Webb, Jo Baty and Cllr das Neves then responded to questions from the Panel:

• Cllr Brennan agreed with the value of listening and learning from mistakes but noted that this was dependent on having a culture than enabled this. Asked if this was part of the staff training, Jo Baty said that front-line staff under pressure could be defensive and that it was important to acknowledge when the Council had got something wrong and to try and put that right. She added that there would be measures next year to introduce an informal Stage 2 for complaints to try to deescalate more cases as a larger number of residents were now resorting to contacting the LGSCO. Sara Sutton added that a new role of Complaints Manager was being introduced as part of the forthcoming capacity increase. Cllr das Neves emphasised the importance of speaking directly to residents in the complex cases where complaints were more likely to arise.

In accordance with the Committee Procedure Rules, the Panel agreed to suspend standing orders in order to allow the meeting to continue after 10pm.

Questions then continued from the Panel:

• Asked by Cllr Brennan about training, Kirsten Webb said it was understood that, as part of corporate induction and management training, there was a need for people joining the organisation to be clear about expectations in dealing with complaints. Sara Sutton added that this would include bespoke training for managers.
• Based on his experience working in the NHS, Cllr Iyngkaran considered that continuous learning was more valuable than one-off training. He added that duty of candour could achieve better responses when dealing with complaints. Jo Baty commented that one element of poor practice had included multiple people being copied into emails about complaints, leading to delays as it was not clear who was responsible for the response. Cllr O’Donovan spoke about the value of direct phone or face-to-face contact when responding to residents.
• Referring to page 120 of the agenda pack on Themes from Upheld Decisions, Cllr Connor commented that these included a lot of familiar issues that she had seen from cases over previous years. However, she noted that there was no detail in the report about how these issues were being addressed and requested that a response paper on this should be provided to the Panel. (ACTION) Sara Sutton highlighted that many of the issues were covered by actions in the Adult Social Care Improvement Plan.
• Referred to the LGSCO performance benchmarking on page 122 of the agenda pack, Cllr Connor highlighted the poor figures for Haringey with high numbers of decisions issues and a high upheld rate. She suggested that the Panel would need to see the data on the monitoring of improvements in these areas in future reports. Updates on the themes from upheld decisions would also be relevant for future reports. (ACTION) Cllr das Neves said that she had previously emphasised to officers the importance of benchmarking against Boroughs which were statistical neighbours with similar demographics and challenges.
• Cllr Connor referred to the external review that had been discussed earlier in the meeting and recommended that this report be provided to the Panel when it became available. (ACTION) Sara Sutton said that there would first be an internal process to engage with the outcome of the report, but agreed that discussions could take place with the Scrutiny Panel chair as part of agenda planning to determine the appropriate point to bring this to a meeting of the Panel.
• While Cllr Connor welcomed the improvements to the safeguarding referrals backlog, she recommended that the Panel continue to monitor this area as concerns remained, including on waiting lists. Cllr das Neves said that it was important to distinguish between waiting lists, which were carried in adult social care by every local authority and managing risk well, which was being addressed through the improvement plan and the response to the findings of the LGSCO. Jo Baty added that monitoring reports would be provided to the Improvement Board and to Scrutiny as part of the improvement process, including on waiting times. Cllr Connor requested that the Panel’s recommendation on receiving the data on waiting times be added to the Panel’s action tracker. (ACTION)