Disclosure Log
complaints about adult social care (FOI/4902)
Message from Nottinghamshire County Council - 08 November 2024
Dear ***** *****
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000 – REQUEST FOR INFORMATION REFERENCE FOI/4902
Thank you for your request for information relating to complaints about adult social care:
REQUEST
How many complaints have you received from citizens who claim that they/someone that they know have received inadequate care from adult-social carers
Please could you specify what types of complaints were made. For example, a citizen complains that their father has been adequately fed.
Please break these complaints down into the following categories:
Gender of the citizen receiving care.
Age of the citizen receiving care.
Ethnicity of the citizen receiving care.
Please also provide and break down this information for the following years; 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23.
How many of these claims were investigated
How many of these claims were proven correct
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How many complaints have you received from citizens who claim that they/someone that they know have not received any care at all
By this, I mean instances where adult-social carers have not shown up. For example, an adult-social carer may be expected to tend to a citizen three times a day, but there has been a report that they have only shown up once a day.
Please break these complaints down into the following categories:
Gender of the citizen receiving care.
Age of the citizen receiving care.
Ethnicity of the citizen receiving care.
Please also provide and break this down into the following years; 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23.
How many of these claims were investigated
How many of these claims were proven correct
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How many complaints have you received from citizens who claim that an adult-social carer has stolen from them/someone that they know
Please break these complaints down into the following categories:
Gender of the citizen receiving care.
Age of the citizen receiving care.
Ethnicity of the citizen receiving care.
Please also break this down into the following years; 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23.
How many of these were investigated
How many of these claims were reported to the police
How many of these claims were proven correct
RESPONSE
I am afraid that we don"t record the data in ways that make it possible to extract within the cost limit.
Complaints about social care may be made direct to the care agency (NCC does not employ carers, we use agencies), to Adult Social Care or to the Complaints team. A complaint to the agency should be notified to Adult Social Care, but depending on the nature of the complaint may be handled internally by the agency. Where Adult Social Care does get involved, the Complaints team will be made aware. Complaints made direct to Adult Social Care should be referred to the Complaints team. The Complaints team does not ask for or record age, gender or ethnicity of complainants or complainant subjects in a way that is automatically retrievable; these things may become apparent in the narrative of a complaint, but to extract them would mean reading every complaint to see if we could find or work out this information. Likewise we do not record the specific nature of complaints in an automatically retrievable way. For example, to find out if a complaint was about "inadequate care" or alleged theft we would have to read the narrative of each complaint.
Therefore the Council is exempt from providing this information under s12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 on the grounds that to do so would exceed the cost limit of £450. In the given time period of 2020 to 2023 there were 719 Adult complaints. Even if it took just five minutes (a conservative estimate) to open and read the record, and find and extract relevant information, it would take 59.9 hours to respond to this request. At a cost of £25 per hour (as set out in the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004) this would amount to over £1,497.
We may be able to provide some information if you are able to narrow the scope of your request. For example you could limit the time-frame to a period of less than a year; or ask for a sample of data across the three years; or remove some of the questions, or perhaps some other narrowing of the scope. What we cannot do is work on a request until the time-limit is reached as requests framed by the cost limit are not valid requests (Recognising a request made under the Freedom of Information Act (section 8) | ICO).
We trust this now satisfies your request and that you find this information to be helpful.
If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request, you have the right to ask for an internal review. Requests should be submitted within 40 working days of the date of receipt of the response to your original request and should be addressed to: Complaints and Information Team, Nottinghamshire County Council, County Hall, Loughborough Road, West Bridgford, NOTTINGHAM, NG2 7QP or [email protected] .
If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, WILMSLOW, SK9 5AF or https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/foi-and-eir-complaints/
Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.
Your privacy: we use your personal information such as name and address so that we can comply with our legal obligations to respond to FOI requests. For further details about the use of information about you, please see the information handling privacy notice on our website at https://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/media/4323566/informationgovernanceandinformationrightsprivacynotice.pdf
Yours sincerely
Complaints and Information Team
Chief Executives Department
Nottinghamshire County Council
The Council is committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring all personal information is kept confidential and safe. For more details see our general and service specific privacy notices at: https://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/global-content/privacy