Find out how you can contact us with a compliment or a complaint and what we will do once we hear from you.
Compliments
If you are pleased with a service we have provided or arranged, we appreciate hearing your feedback because knowing when things go well helps us improve the way we work.
Once we receive your feedback, and with your agreement, we will share this with relevant managers so the good work can be recognised.
Complaints
We always strive to provide you with the best level of service and support, but unfortunately sometimes things go wrong and telling us about it gives us the chance to fix things for you and make improvements.
We can look at any complaints from a member of the public who has received, or was entitled to receive, a service from Adult Services.
A complaint is dissatisfaction or concern about something we did, or didn’t do, or you considered the service was below standard. We cannot consider something a complaint if you are requesting a service for the first time eg an assessment of your care needs, or you want to challenge a decision, or you are lobbying for change.
A complaint should be made within 12 months of the problem starting or being identified.
If you get in touch with us, we will look at your concern and let you know whether it can be considered through our Complaints procedure, or if you need to go through another avenue. If you are not sure if your concern can be dealt with under our Complaints procedure, you can get in touch with us to discuss how we can best handle your concern.
For detailed information on our complaints procedure please ask for a copy of our Adult Services Complaints procedure.
Who do I contact?
To submit a compliment or complaint about Adult Services, contact us in writing or by phone.
Tel: 029 2087 3885 (Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 4pm)
Adult Services Complaints
Room 412, County Hall
Atlantic Wharf
Cardiff
CF10 4UW
You can also raise a concern with a member of staff at any one of our
Hubs.
Although we can look at a complaint about a service that we have arranged for you with another care provider, such as a residential care home or a home care agency, we request that you only do this once you have followed the provider’s own complaints process.
If your complaint is about something we have provided jointly with another organisation, e.g. a nursing home placement with health funding, we will look at your complaint together and usually send you one response.
We want to fully understand what’s gone wrong. We will need some information from you to make sure the right person handles your complaint and can investigate as soon as possible. When contacting us, please give us the following information:
- your name and address, and/or the details of the person you are complaining on behalf of,
- a description of the complaint and what the effect has been,
- when the issue happened, and
- a contact number (or your other preferred method of contact) and a convenient time to contact you. This will help us get hold of you if we need to discuss your complaint, especially if we need any more information. Calls from us may appear as unknown or withheld numbers.
If you make a complaint, we will respect your right to confidentiality. Although we will need to share this information you give us with others who might be dealing with your complaint, we will only do this if necessary. We will not pass on any information unless we have to do so by law and will only pass on as much as is necessary.
If you are acting on behalf of someone else, we will ask for evidence to show that you have the person’s permission or legal status to act on their behalf.
You have the right to an advocate (someone who will help you state your point of view). If you do not know how to go about this, let us know and we will support you to find one.
We will do everything we can to resolve your complaint quickly and fairly. We will send you a letter within 2 working days after your complaint was received by us, confirming receipt of your complaint and the date you can expect a response from us. If we need extra information to investigate the complaint, we will request this at the same time.
We aim to resolve your complaint within 15 working days after we receive it, and we will write to you once we have completed our investigation. For more complex issues we may need a little more time to investigate your complaint. If this is the case, we will send you an acknowledgement letter outlining the next steps and when you can expect to hear from us.
Once we have completed a thorough investigation, we will give you a final response in writing outlining how we reached our decision, and if your complaint is upheld, we will apologise and aim to put things right.
If you do not agree with our response after we have investigated your complaint you can come back to us to request an independent formal investigation, called a Stage 2 Investigation. We will find a suitable independent investigator, who is not an employee of Cardiff Council to look further into this matter.
We will write to you within 5 working days of your request outlining your complaint and the outcome that you would like to achieve. We will ask you to confirm that we have understood what you would like to be investigated.
At the same time we will contact all appropriately qualified investigators. A start date will be dependent on the availability of investigators, but we will do all we can to arrange this as soon as possible. Once we have found an appropriate investigator, we will write to you and inform you of the investigation’s start date.
The formal investigation must be completed within 25 working days from the agreed start date. If there is a delay for any reason, we will keep you updated. Once the investigator has completed their investigation, they will provide us with a report. We will consider the findings in the report and determine whether or not the complaint is upheld and the action to be taken as a consequence. We will then write to you, and if we have made a mistake, we will apologise and aim to put things right.
If you do not agree with both our own and the independent formal investigation you can ask the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales to look at your complaint. This is a free, impartial service that helps resolve disputes. Although you can refer to the Ombudsman at any time, they may check with us to make sure you have complained to us first and given us a chance to put things right.
Tel: 0300 790 0203 (calls charged at local rate)
1 Ffordd yr Hen Gae
Pencoed
Bridgend
CF35 5LJ