How we deal with complaints about care
Whistleblowing
Our organisation is a ‘prescribed person’ under The Public Interest Disclosure (prescribed Persons) Order 2014. This Act provides protection to workers that make disclosures in the public interest. This means that employees can raise issues of concern (disclosures) in confidence with us about the quality of care that is provided in services that are registered with us. We will use the information we received to improve the services we regulate, and we will protect the person’s identity throughout.
We are legally obligated to share information relating to criminal offences and to public protection. We cannot give advice about the legal protection offered to whistle-blowers. However, if you are an employee or a social work student and you are unsure about how to raise a concern in your workplace, guidance is available on our website. It explains the difference between raising a concern and whistleblowing, and when a person raising a concern qualifies for legal protection under whistleblowing law.
Research has evidenced that people can be reluctant to make complaints because they concerned about repercussion. In order to support this, you can make complaints in the following ways.
If you have told us who you are but you ask us to keep your identity confidential from the care service, we will respect your wishes wherever possible. We will not share your identity with the service without your consent. This option allows us to gather more information about the complaint to assist in our assessment of your complaint and any investigation. It also enables us to feedback directly to you on the findings from the complaint and any actions to support improvement.
However, there will be exceptions to this. For example, where it appears that a criminal offence may have been committed or the issue you have raised with us is about adult or child protection, we will pass any relevant information to Police Scotland or social work to investigate in line with legislation and we will also pass on your details to them. We will make clear to the agencies that you have requested confidentiality.
If you choose to keep your identity confidential from the care service, this may limit what we can investigate if it may identify you. We will discuss this with you and support you to make some decisions about this.
We take all complaints seriously. Anonymous concerns provide a valuable source of information about how well a service is operating.
You can choose to make your complaint anonymously. However, being anonymous can limit our assessment or any investigation of the issues raised as we cannot clarify or verify information. It also means we cannot feedback to you on the outcome of the assessment or investigation. This includes you being able to contact us for further information on an anonymous complaint you have made.
It is useful to have someone to discuss complaints made as described above, if possible, we would ask you are a confidential rather than an anonymous complainant. Your contact details, if you chose to make your complaint confidential, will not be shared with the service without your permission.
Please note: if you choose to remain anonymous, we may share the care aspects of the complaint with the provider and/or service. This will only be if we have assessed the complaint as being suitable for resolution – logged as intelligence. We will not share any identifying factors from the details provided.