Today we have published the Social Work Model Complaints Handling Procedure (CHP). This sets out how complaints about social work services must be handled from 1 April 2017. It will bring social work complaints largely in line with the complaints handling arrangements in place across the wider public sector, and with NHS complaints handling which is also set to change from April 2017.
The Social Work Model CHP will apply to all organisations that deliver social work functions, including both local authorities and health and social care partnerships. It was developed in partnership with representatives from social work, health and social care, the Scottish Government and third sector organisations, together with other key partners from the public sector.
The focus of the new CHP, as with others that we have developed, is on ensuring that customers have easy access to an efficient, customer focused complaints service which responds to their concerns quickly and as close to the point of service as possible. The extension of this approach to social work services will also help local authorities and health and social care partnerships in providing coordinated responses to complaints that cover more than one service.
An important aspect of all model CHPs is the requirement to learn from complaints. The new social work CHP requires organisations to assess and report their complaints handling performance against the SPSO performance indicators. This will help to facilitate continuous improvement through the benchmarking of performance within and across sectors. Importantly, it will help organisations to use the outcome of complaints to improve service delivery.
The Social Work Model CHP and associated documents are available on the Valuing Complaints website, along with further information about the legal background to these changes.