How we deal with complaints about care

Last updated: 21 May 2026

Meeting your expectations

We investigate complaints in an independent, impartial, and fair way. We believe that complainants have a right to be heard, understood, and respected and we aim to be as open and accessible as we can.

Following our complaint investigations, we may make requirements to the care services about areas of practice which we expect them to improve. We may not always be able to meet your expectations of what you think the outcome should be. We will discuss with you the actions we can take.

While we appreciate that the cause of a complaint generates strong feelings, we may have to decide that we cannot help if your behaviour or action makes it difficult for us to deal with your complaint.

Examples include:

  • subjecting staff to behaviour that is aggressive, abusive, threatening, or unreasonable

  • persistent refusal to accept our decision about a complaint

  • persistent refusal to accept our explanations about what can or cannot be done about a complaint

  • continuing to pursue a complaint without presenting any new information

  • unreasonably frequent or persistent contact with Care Inspectorate staff.

We have policies and procedures for managing difficult behaviour experienced by our staff. We will work with people to resolve their complaint but where we have concerns about conduct, we will act. This may include allowing only one point of contact in the organisation or to only communicate by email or letter. We will discuss this with you and inform you of any action we will take.

We have a zero tolerance approach to any threatening or abusive behaviour towards our staff and will terminate contact with people who are abusive. We will only terminate contact when all other approaches to support communication have failed. If the contact is unreasonable, we will write to explain this and may terminate further contact.