Introduction - Nugent



center175895Complaints and Compliments Annual Report April 2014 to March 2015Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u Introduction PAGEREF _Toc418175297 \h 2Nugent Care’s approach to complaints PAGEREF _Toc418175298 \h 2The Three Stage Process PAGEREF _Toc418175299 \h 3How we listen to what people say about our services PAGEREF _Toc418175300 \h 4Comparison of complaints 2011/12 and 2012/13 PAGEREF _Toc418175301 \h 5Categories of complaints PAGEREF _Toc418175302 \h 6Comparison of complaints by type 2012/13 and 2013/14 PAGEREF _Toc418175303 \h 8Complaints by service PAGEREF _Toc418175304 \h 10Breakdown of who complaints were made against 2014/15 PAGEREF _Toc418175305 \h 11Outcomes of complaints PAGEREF _Toc418175306 \h 12Gender of Complainants PAGEREF _Toc418175307 \h 13Strategies put in place PAGEREF _Toc418175308 \h 13Compliments PAGEREF _Toc418175309 \h 14Sample of compliments over the last 12 months PAGEREF _Toc418175310 \h 14IntroductionThis is the seventh annual report on complaints and compliments that Nugent Care has produced and covers the period April 2014 to March 2015. Nugent Care encourages complaints and compliments. We want to work with service users, parents, carers, families and other professionals to provide quality services to meet their needs.Nugent Care’s definition of a complaint is: ‘An expression of dissatisfaction with any of Nugent Care’s services or projects which requires a response.’A complaint is treated seriously whether it is made in person, by telephone, letter, fax, email, or through our pliments can be received in a number of ways, but at present are not formally reported to the Quality Assurance Department (QA). Some of the compliments reported have been obtained from the annual satisfaction surveys which are sent to all service users and their carers (where service users lack capacity).Nugent Care’s approach to complaintsNugent Care values complaints and views them in a positive light. Complaints help us to:listen to the views of people for whom we provide a servicelearn what people really want from our servicesimplement continuous improvement to the services we provideIt is our intention to:take every complaint/concern raised seriouslylisten and respond to issues raisedrespond quickly at local level wherever possiblerespect confidentialityrecord all complaints and analyse them to prevent reoccurrenceOur service users and their carers may find it difficult to talk about their views or concerns. They may:be worried that complaining will lead to repercussions from staff providing the servicefind it difficult to speak out because of their level of communication skills, their racial, cultural or religious background or their age, gender or sexual orientation.Nugent Care wants all users of its’ services to feel confident that their views will be taken seriously, and that there will be no repercussions if they need to raise genuine concerns.The Three Stage ProcessWe encourage all staff to respond quickly and clearly to any concerns that are raised by service users or their relatives. However, it is not always possible to solve problems this way. There are times when a more detailed investigation is required.Stage 1:We aim to resolve most complaints as close as possible to where the problem first arose. Local staff are responsible for responding as quickly as possible to problems. We aim to respond to complaints at this stage within 10 working days, and to resolve as many complaints as we can at Stage 1.Stage 2:If someone is not happy with the outcome at Stage 1 they have the right to ask for the complaint to be investigated at Stage 2. People can also request an investigation at Stage 2 without having gone through Stage 1.We aim to resolve a Stage 2 complaint within 25 working days or to a maximum of 65 working days with the agreement of the complainant.Stage 3:If a complainant is dissatisfied with the investigation at Stage 2 they must put their reasons in writing and request a review. Two senior members of staff, who have not been directly involved with the complaint, will review the investigation documentation and notify the Complaints Manager of their recommendations. The Complaints Manager will then write to the complainant with their recommendations within 10 days of the decision. This is the end of our complaints procedure.When the Nugent Care complaints procedure has been exhausted, people may ask for their complaint to be looked at by the Local Government Ombudsman, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), or the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), if a regulated service, or the Local Authority if the service is funded by them, whichever is appropriate.How we listen to what people say about our servicesInformation is provided at all our services on how to make a complaint or compliment. We also have a facility on our website for people to make a complaint electronically. Although the number of complaints made through the website continues to be very small we feel that it is important to give our service users and their families a variety of ways that they can make a complaint.A marketing initiative called ‘Caring Together’ was pulled together by relevant departments within Nugent Care, to professionally highlight how Nugent Care responds to abuse, comments, compliments and complaints, and has also modernised the residents handbook for adult services. This is currently in place at James Nugent Court and is about to be rolled out to Geel and Hitchen Court and then to the rest of the Adult Services. The majority of complaints received by Nugent Care are reported verbally by service users or their families. The service users in each of our services, and the relatives/carers of those service users who are unable to complete a survey, receive a satisfaction survey once a year. In the surveys service users and relatives are free to comment on how they feel about the services that Nugent Care provides. We have found that the most effective way of capturing compliments continues to be through the analysis of the satisfaction surveys. All comments on the surveys are recorded and reported back to the Heads of Service. Comparison of complaints 2011/12 and 2012/13A comparison has been made between the number of recorded complaints in 2013/14 and 2014/15. The total number of complaints between these years has increased from 47 in 2013/14 to 65 in 2014/15. However, 6 of the complaints received in the past year have gone on to be treated as safeguarding issues or grievances which are dealt with under separate procedures and have only been recorded in this report because they originated as complaints.There has been an increase in the number of complaints reported at Nugent House School, Geel and James Nugent Court. There has been a decrease in the number of complaints at St Catherine’s.Categories of complaintsNugent Care has looked at the types of complaints and categorised them into nine main headings and one ‘other’ category, into which a variety of complaints that fall in too few numbers to warrant a category of their own are placed. There were 6 complaints (9%) in the behavioural category. This type of complaint usually involves the behaviour of other service users (other than bullying). All of the complaints in this category came from the childcare sector and involved name calling, comments about religion and disruptive behaviour. One complaint came from a neighbour who said that young people had been coming into their garden and trying to get in the door. All of these complaints were upheld. There were 6 complaints (9%) about bullying which all came from the children’s sector one of which involved a young person making racist/cultural remarks towards another young person. All of these complaints were upheld. There were 6 complaints (9%) within the care category, all of which came from the adult care sector. One of the complaints was dealt with as an allegation, 2 were upheld, 2 were partially upheld and one was not upheld.There were 3 complaints (5%) regarding confidentiality. A young person complained that a member of staff had told others about personal details and a member of staff complained that the new security cameras were watching the whole of the rest room area where staff have lunch. Both were partially upheld. The third complaint by a member of staff when a relative gained entrance to the staff office and photographed mum’s records without permission has been dealt with as a serious incident. There was 1 complaint (1%) regarding data protection which was partially upheld.There were 3 complaints (5%) regarding a rise in fees, although one complainant withdrew the complaint and said they had not meant it to be treated as a complaint. One was upheld and the other was not upheld.There were 2 complaints (3%) regarding medication, one in the adult sector and the other in the childcare sector. A relative complained about the staff’s competence to administer medication, this was not upheld as the member of staff was putting away a delivery of drugs at the time and not administering medication. A young person complained that there had been an unacceptable delay in getting medication for mood swings. This complaint was upheld, staff contacted the young person’s doctor and the prescription was obtained. There were 25 complaints (38%) regarding staff actions. Of these complaints, 13 came from the children’s sector. In the adult sector two of the complaints were from people who had attended interviews and felt they hadn’t been treated appropriately, several were regarding staff’s attitude to them when visiting relatives, there was also a complaint about missing teeth. In the childcare sector complaints included young people who thought it was unfair to treat young people differently, staff arguing in front of young people and remarks made by staff that caused discomfort. In total 7 complaints were upheld, 8 were partially upheld and 8 were not upheld.There was 1 complaint (2%) regarding theft of money. This was not upheld because there was no evidence of the money being held by the service user and lockable cabinets are provided for valuables in service user’s rooms.There were 12 complaints (18%) which fell into the ‘other’ category, of which 1 was dealt with as a grievance, 6 were upheld, 2 were partially upheld and 3 were not upheld. Half of these complaints were made in the childcare sector and the remainder in the adult/community sector. This category takes in a variety of complaints which do not easily fall into the main categories. These complaints included not having access to the internet, the length of time taken to install a donated scanner, having to wait to use the telephone and a neighbour complaining that service users were taking their cat in and feeding parison of complaints by type 2012/13 and 2013/14The overall trend in the number of complaints reported had risen since 2013/14. The number of complaints with regard to behavioural issues has fallen since the previous year but the number of complaints in all other categories has increased. The number of complaints about behaviour has fallen, from 14 in 2013/14 to 6 in 2015/15. All complaints about behaviour have come from the children’s sector and are generally about the use of bad language and unacceptable behaviour. The number of complaints about bullying has risen from 1 in 2013/14 to 6 in 2014/15. All but one of these complaints were a result of verbal rather than physical bullying and have been a cause of distress to the young people targeted. Staff constantly work with the groups of young people in an attempt to help them to modify their behaviour. Sometimes the person exhibiting bullying behaviour does not realise that their behaviour can be perceived as bullying. The number of complaints about care has increased from 1 in 2013/14 to 6 in 2014/15. One of these has gone on to be treated as an allegation rather than as a complaint.There was 1 complaint regarding medication in 2013/14 and 2 in 2014/15. One was upheld and the other not upheld as the staff member was not administering medication at the time of the alleged incident.There has been an increase in the number of complaints about staff actions from 21 in 2013/14 to 25 in 2014/15. The majority have come from the childcare sector. One complaint in the adult sector was due to the fact that a placement was refused as being inappropriate for the individual and a copy of the assessment had not been sent to the family member. This complaint was not upheld as the individual had capacity and as such the relative would not be sent a copy of the assessment.There has been a slight increase in the number of complaints in the ‘other’ category from 8 in 2013/14 to 12 in 2014/15. Half come from the childcare sector and the remainder from the adult and community sectors. Examples of complaints in this category include a neighbour being unhappy that residents and staff were taking their cat in and feeding it, having to wait to use the payphone and relatives complaining that a scanner they had donated to a service had not been installed. Complaints by serviceWhen we analyse the complaints by service we see that 34 (52%) of all recorded complaints came from the children’s sector (children’s homes, schools and secure unit), 24 (37%) from adult residential, 2 (3%) from HSU, 2 (3%) from Hard of Hearing services, 2 (3%) from Head Office and 1 (2%) from Day Care services.Breakdown of who complaints were made against 2014/15The majority of complaints, 46 (71%) were made against Nugent Care. 13 complaints (20%) were made by service users against other service users, these are mainly made up of complaints about the unacceptable behaviour of other service users and came exclusively from the childcare sector.6 complaints (9%) were not actually complaints and were passed on to be dealt with as allegations/safeguarding issues and only appear here because they were originally recorded as complaints.Outcomes of complaintsOf the 65 complaints reported in 2014/15, 28 (43%) were upheld, 17 (26%) were not upheld and 14 (21%) were partially upheld. 6 complaints (9%) went on to be treated as allegations/safeguarding issues and as such no outcome is recorded with regards to complaints.These can be broken down for the different types of services as follows:We also monitored acceptance of the outcomes by the complainants wherever possible. We found that 30 people (46%) accepted the outcome, 5 people (8%) did not accept the outcome but the complaint did not progress to stage 2 and for the remaining 24 (37%) we were not able to find out if they accepted the outcome or not. 6 complaints (9%) went on to be treated as allegations/safeguarding issues and as such there are no outcomes recorded with regards to complaints and therefore no acceptances.Gender of Complainants20 (31%) of the complainants were male, 44 (68%) were female and 1 (1%) was unknown because it was sent as an anonymous complaint. Strategies put in placeAs a result of the complaints investigations undertaken during this period a number of strategies have been put in place in order to resolve issues and reduce the likelihood of reoccurrence. These include:Reorganisation of staffing rotasProcesses reviewed and revisedAdditional support for individualsStrategies put in place to manage negative behaviourTherapeutic interventionsMediation to settle disputes between young plimentsWe have found that service users and their relatives/carers often praise the service they receive when they complete the annual satisfaction surveys. When the surveys are analysed by the Performance Management Unit all comments, including compliments are recorded and reported back to the Heads of Service. Sample of compliments over the last 12 monthsAccess to RecordsThank you so much for your willingness to search for [her]. It means so much to my family.Thank you for taking an interest in my request. I also appreciate you sending me the name of a contact at the Liverpool Records office. Thank you very much!Thank you very much for your helpful replies. I will follow up the Hope contact you kindly gave me.Thank you so much for looking into this so quickly. I am very grateful.ClumberAll the staff are wonderful.Garden ProjectThe Garden Project is very good for my son, he likes it very much.The Garden Project provide an excellent service and are always respectful and dignified when carrying out work at Conway Road.Gilmoss Volunteer GroupOver the years I have made many friendships which have resulted in me socialising outside the club. I feel valued by the families of the people I support.We have built up a close relationship with our members over the years, many we have known since childhood. We also know their families very well and have built a trust and special friendship together.After 40 years still enjoying every Thursday evening. Have made so many friends over the years that expenses could not buy.Hear HereI feel more positive and confident about my hearing loss now and more able to cope.Since I have come to the class I have gained so much more confidence.Great class with lively, interesting and fun learning methods used, the class members are kind and caring, the tutor is excellent with all strengths and no weaknesses!James Nugent CourtI would like to say you have a strong staff team lead by two very competent staff members. The person who has recently been made up to deputy, this has aided in rebuilding the staff/management relationship.Lime HouseLime House is really lovely, as are all the staff. I wouldn’t like my aunty to be anywhere else. No complaints or worries whatsoever! Thank you.We have no comments to add as we are happy with the care my mother is receiving and don’t think it could be improved any more.From making the choice to seek a place at Lime House to date I have been entirely satisfied with the care that my mum receives. The staff are warm and welcoming, non-judgemental and responsive. The atmosphere in the home is calm and well-ordered and I also see other residents who may be a little more challenging than my mum treated with patience and respect. The cleanliness, lack of the usual institution odour and the furnishings within the home also make it a desirable option.St Joseph’sThe staff make time to listen to me, but by now the staff know my daughter and I so well, they know our needs.The home has a lovely homely feeling. All the staff are really there to help if I have anything to talk to them about concerning my granddaughter. I feel quite happy with her being there.Over the past months I have been suffering from cancer and I feel the staff have kept [my relative] informed and helped him to deal with this situation. As I am unable to visit they make sure he phones me and sends flowers. I feel I don’t have any added worries about his care etc. When my husband visited recently he seemed to be well informed of the situation that will be ongoing for some time. ................
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