Compliments and Complaints

If you think a member of staff (or a team) has been particularly helpful and deserves special recognition, please let us know. Positive feedback helps us share and promote good practice.

Let us know by filing in this compliments form.

When you talk to your friends and family about us you probably say what you think we should do to make our services better. Why not tell us too?

Your comments and ideas can help us change the way we do things for the better – sometimes the simplest suggestion can make the biggest difference. We promise to listen and use what we can.

If you have ideas about how we can improve please talk to the staff working directly with you or the team manager.

We always try to deliver good quality services but we know that, sometimes, things go wrong. If this happens it’s important that you tell us as soon as possible. Please be assured that we will not treat you less favourably or withdraw services because of a complaint.

Generally, complaints should be about matters which have happened within the last 12 months although, in some cases, we can accept complaints that are older than this. If you are not sure please discuss your complaint with us.

If you still feel you’d like to complain, please use the children’s social care complaints form or the corporate complaints form.

If you are unhappy with the service we provide or the way you have been treated by a member of staff please tell us straight away. Once we know something isn’t right, we can start to sort it out or at least explain why we can’t do things differently.

The easiest and quickest way to let us know there is a problem is to tell the staff working with you, their manager (if you are in care, their contact details will be in your Care Plan) or, if you prefer, contact the Customer Relations Team or fill in the complaints form (details above).

We will look into your complaint and talk to you to agree a way forward.

Although we aim to complete this stage within 10 working days sometimes this is not possible. If this is the case, we will let you know how much longer we need but this should be within 20 working days.

If you aren’t happy with our response you can ask us to look into your complaint again. You can either contact the person who dealt with your initial complaint or the Customer Relations Team at Reading Borough Council, who manage complaints on our behalf.

We will ask someone who has no previous connection with you, or the staff working with you, to investigate your complaint again. They will look at the files, talk to everyone involved and produce a written report with recommendations.

The Director/Head of Service will then decide what action we should take (if any) and confirm this to you in writing.

We aim to complete this stage within 25 working days of receiving your further complaint. However, we can extend this to up to 65 working days if it isn’t possible to investigate fully within this time.

If you still think we haven’t dealt with your complaint properly you can ask for a review.

An independent panel made up of three people who don’t work for us will look at the way your complaint was handled. The panel will hear from everyone involved and then produce a report with their recommendations about what should happen next (we will send you a copy).

The Director of Children’s Services will consider these recommendations, decide what action to take and confirm their decision to you in writing within 28 days of the panel hearing.

The panel is the last stage of our complaints process. If you are still not happy with the outcome you can contact the Local Government Ombudsman. The Ombudsman provides an independent, impartial and free service investigating complaints about services provided by us.

You can contact the Ombudsman at any stage of the complaints process but, in most cases, the Ombudsman will ask you to give us a chance to deal with your complaint before they investigate.