Delivering impact from our casework
‘Learning from complaints can bring change and help improve public services and the relationship between people and the state. This requires us to be transparent and open as an organisation.’ Our strategy 2025 to 2026
Studies have shown that different communities can experience disparities in public service outcomes. For example, evidence published in The Lancet highlights that prolonged waiting times for gender-affirming care can contribute to poorer health outcomes for transgender and gender diverse people. These outcomes can include a greater likelihood of needing additional care because of adverse effects on mental and physical wellbeing.
We know that where a range of interventions are required, it can be challenging for people to make a complaint when they need to. That is why we want to make it easier for people to complain and to make sure that those who have already overcome numerous challenges can bring a complaint to us. This will also help us to investigate more issues than we have before.
When it looks like we might need to take further action on a complaint, we will carry out a detailed investigation. We ask everyone involved in a complaint to tell us what information they want us to consider. We involve them throughout the process. We make sure our decisions are independent and, where necessary, take specialist advice and consider relevant professional standards to support our work. We want the people bringing a complaint to us, and the organisation complained about, to be confident that we are delivering an impartial and evidence-based decision.
We want to focus our detailed investigations on the issues where we think we can have a bigger impact. We will develop better ways of looking at the information we have about our casework to understand when an issue affects many people.
We want to use this information to make decisions that benefit individuals and give public services recommendations to work on so they can improve their services and avoid the same complaints happening again.
End-of-life care: improving ‘do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation’ (DNACPR) conversations for everyone
‘During the COVID-19 pandemic we received a higher number of complaints than normal about communication of “do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation” (DNACPR) decisions. Almost all of the DNACPR complaints brought to us were from or on behalf of disabled people or older people. If you build a system to support the most underrepresented and underserved, it should serve everyone better.’ Our DNACPR report
We recommended that all NHS-funded providers should have their staff complete additional training on CPR and that this should be co-designed by the people who use their services.
We want to identify more trends and themes in our work. We will gather data from complaints where people tell us their protected characteristics were a factor in how they were treated by the organisation they complain about.
We are committed to publishing more of our casework decisions. By being transparent about the decisions we make, we want to gain public confidence that we are a fair and inclusive organisation that values every complaint and encourages everyone to use our service when they need it. We want our decisions to support organisations to learn lessons and improve their services.