National Care Service: Complaints - Co-design Partnership Programme report

System complexity is pushed onto users, especially for complaints that involve multiple services.

People can experience complaints that involve multiple services as fragmented and uncoordinated. People can be left to navigate boundaries, repeat their story, and chase progress. It is not always clear which service is accountable.

Other points around this included:

• the complaint process should be clear, no matter the number of services involved
• no clear lead organisation can cause delays and frustration
• lack of coordination increases emotional and administrative burden
• clear responsibility is essential to restoring trust

Here are some of the things people said during our discussions:

“There is currently no clear, accessible route for submitting a single complaint that spans multiple services.”

“No one wants to take responsibility and they will pass it onto another service if possible […]”

How we will use this

We have heard there is a need to address fragmentation and improve coordination across complaints, particularly where more than one service is involved. This will inform work to strengthen shared understanding of roles, responsibilities and routes for raising complaints. We will explore opportunities to update and improve guidance, information and support. This will help people better understand where to raise concerns when issues span services, without adding new layers of complexity.