We're joined by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman Paula Sussex in our latest episode of Making Complaints Count. Paula speaks to senior caseworker James Glover about her first few months in the role and shares what most excites her about the future.
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James Glover Hello and welcome to a very special episode of Making Complaints Count. My name is James and I'm a Senior Caseworker at PHSO. Today, we're delighted to be joined by our new Ombudsman, Paula Sussex. Paula started in the role of Ombudsman in August and joined PHSO from the financial technology firm OneID, where she was CEO from 2023. Prior to that, Paula was CEO at the Student Loans Company from 2018 to 2022 and the Charity Commission from 2014 to 2017. She was awarded a CBE in 2022 for services to higher education.
Today, we'll be discussing Paula's background, the value of complaints and how organisations can learn from them to improve their service. Thank you so much for joining us, Paula. So firstly, can you tell us about which values have been consistent in your personal and professional life?
Paula Sussex It's a big question, James. I guess it would be certainly, perhaps this is not a value, but creating value, building something really great, or improving something that needs to be improved and to be made really great again. There is that drive to do good, I suppose I would call that.
And this applies equally to the commercial sector as it does to my life in public sector, but within that huge sense of fairness, justice, development, doing right by people, be that your colleagues, your service users, and I would say generally, moving this country of ours on, which sounds awfully grand, but that's what drives me on every day.
James Glover And is there anything in your own career to date that brought you to where you are now?
Paula Sussex So perhaps inevitably, I originally trained as a barrister and was called to the bar in 1988 and then immediately got lured away into the world of management consulting, which I think got me started to give me a good understanding of the way that organisations work.
That also led into a career in information technology, all aspects of it, so delivering scale systems for large parts of certainly government, and understanding how important technology is to the modern world that we all live in.
But I think there was always a sense in which, although the commercial sector is incredibly important, a lot of respect for the way in which it innovates and drives forward the sum of human condition, my heart lies in public service.
Which took me to the Charity Commission, which blended a lot of that technical and operational. So it's a quasi-judicial organisation doing hugely important work, regulating the charity sector, which in itself is hugely important to the quality of life in the UK, and also then on to Student Loans, which is a sizeable operation with very many customers.
And that brought me back to that sense of customers that we have, our service users here at PHSO, and how important it is to deliver the service that that they deserve and that they are entitled to expect.
But along the way, zigzagging off to run a FinTech technology startup, OneID, with a technology which I believe is of significant importance to supporting the safety of kids online, as well as eliminating fraud in being able to easily prove ID and it was a
B-Corporation. So you can see that there's a fairly strong theme of doing things that add value. And as I would always say, have a point to them. Have a real point to them.
James Glover Yeah, it's quite interesting how you talked about, starting out as a barrister, and then how you moved into the world of digital and tech, and how maybe they've come together quite nicely in the role of Ombudsman, and that you're still seeking justice for people who've been let down. Also as we move to become a digital Ombudsman and how those skills can be put in place as we move forward with that plan.
Paula Sussex Yeah, exactly, exactly James.
James Glover So you've been Ombudsman for over three months now. Is there anything that you're most proud of since you've joined the organisation?
Paula Sussex There's a defining characteristic of PHSO that makes my heart leap every day I hear or see it, and that is the tremendous sense of values and commitment that I see in the caseworkers.
Just this morning in the London office, chatting to a caseworker here, making the difference to an individual day in day out. And also building on that, when colleagues feel open to say to me, often sitting in with intake, ‘How can we have a more powerful voice?’ So that sense of making a real difference, and even if we're not upholding a complaint, that sense of closure, that sense of listening and having an answer is just hugely important, and just hearing that from just so many. I suspect yourself, James, I suspect this resonates with you, is the thing that I'm day in day out, proud by and invigorated by,
James Glover Yeah, absolutely. And it's something that I see in my own cases, just providing that sense of reassurance to individuals who maybe feel that something has gone wrong with maybe the care they've received or the service they've received from a government organisation. If we can provide reassurance that maybe things did go right for them, or alternatively, if not, then what have we done to put things right for them. And that reassurance that we're here to listen to their complaints and provide important empathy at the most critical times in their lives, I think it's a real strength of the Ombudsman.
Paulla Sussex I think that that word that you use listening to them is so important, and an important thing for me in this role is that we communicate more broadly, that this is you as a caseworker, but this is also the state that is saying it will listen to citizens. And as, as you said, if the citizen has found an error in a system or an individual care, etc. that needs to be put right, the state will put it right. That is really important in an environment of low trust. Really important, so that listening, even if we don't uphold, is incredibly important.
James Glover I think sometimes having an individual caseworker, a named caseworker, is so important for people. When you speak to them on the phone and you send an email directly to them, it really breaks down barriers and turns what can be seen as quite a faceless process into a real conversation about the experience that they've had. And it's probably the first time in the entire complaints process that they felt listened to and felt heard, and that can make a big impact on their healing process.
What was it about the role of Ombudsman that appealed to you, and was it that individual justice, or was it something more that's brought you to the role?
Paula Sussex It was both the individual justice, which I think is hugely important. We are the last line of defence, and that is incredibly important that we have that last line of defence. It was also the ability of the Ombudsman to do more, and the way I phrase it at the moment is to play a more active role in the improvement of public service, and that will, more often than not, mean with others, through others, but the phenomenal data, insights that, or insights that we can draw from our data, it's incredibly important, and that is what lies behind the focus on our systemic work, the strategic themes that we will be starting to talk more about as we firm them up.
It's an incredibly powerful opportunity for the Ombudsman to be able to do. I remember in the early stages of looking at this role, there was a colleague who said, ‘I just don't want this to happen to anyone else again’, and sometimes that is getting to the root cause of what's gone wrong and stopping it for other people. So important.
James Glover Yeah, absolutely. And when you talk about the systemic work that we can do, the number of people that can have their life changed by that work is really quite significant. You’ve spoke about being the last line of defence, but wanting to do more. Is it just through that systemic work, or is there something else that you're planning on pursuing to achieve it?
Paula Sussex I think we can do more with our voice. We've got an opportunity just building on what that colleague said. How can we have a more powerful voice? And we're working on doing that, but also the really important work that we do in developing a culture of complaints are a gift, which as a team, works well and I want to extend so that we have in health and in government. In parliament we have end to end organisations wanting to look for that feedback, the voice of the user at every level in the organisation and using it to stand in the service user’s shoes to make the changes that they can see from that. But just every single day, as we do see already in some organisations, end to end, saying, ‘Are we doing the best that we can do?’ and assessing that through the voice of the user.
James Glover Yeah, it's such an important perspective to take and working from inside an organisation you often don't see the impact on the people that you are working to serve. So by listening to their experiences through that complaints process is such important feedback for people who are trying to improve the service that they give to others, whether that is the healthcare or parliamentary work exactly.
And next up, I'd be really interested to hear about some of your main priorities going forward?
Paula Sussex So huge, important focus, getting the culture of complaints are truly a gift. Complaints are a positive thing, and we at PHSO have been working on Complaint Standards complaints training for some years, making great progress. I really want to extend and promote that work, particularly through the senior levels of all of the organisations within our jurisdiction. So that's both in our government, parliamentary organisations, but also in the health sector.
James Glover Yeah, it's really interesting that you speak about the senior leaders, because often at the Ombudsman, we speak to complaints teams and the departments there. But to speak to the top level of the leadership, I think it can really help to bring a top-down change to the rest of the organisation and make sure that listening to complaints is embedded at every stage of the process. Whether that's the forward-facing staff who are actually dealing out the service or those complaint handlers who listen to people when they've experienced something going wrong.
What is it that you think we can do to make the voices of individuals heard, especially those who might feel powerless against large organisations?
Paula Sussex So just building on that very good point that you made, James, it needs to be endemic within the organisation, that responsiveness to your service user’s feedback. Let's call it generically that, and it's understandable that, of course, in complaints teams, there's a huge focus that is their job, but that sometimes gets lost through the operations of these organisations and sometimes isn't as energetically sponsored and followed through at the top table.
I learned this particularly when I was running Student Loans Company, which is quite a large organisation with about eight million customers now and processing very many millions of financial transactions every day. I used to review a sample of our complaints every week, sitting down with the team, and the way that I used that was absolutely something of an internal audit function.
So what's happening in the organisation? They're often that the operation is very often an enormous, complex, pressurised entity, and just pulling out that voice of the user, and then reflecting on: Is this something that is widespread? Is this something in a system, in the culture, in our process? Is what we're doing in our continuous improvement, in our training, in our induction, in our technology transformation, going to address that? Or are we missing something? And perhaps most fundamentally, how does it feel to the user? Are we delivering a service which is centred around the user? So in healthcare, critically, now that is patient-centred care. Is the patient at the centre of this care?
And you do get that when you have senior team sponsor and so I was delighted to have visited at least one Health Trust where Rebecca and I very, very much felt that the very top team took the time to review, pretty much every day, complaints from patients, to understand, as one of the chief execs said to me, almost as a surveillance system of what was happening on the ground.
So it's an incredibly important thing, and also to follow that through and meet with patients and complainants, as I am starting to do with our own service users when we too have not delivered on the best possible service. Mistakes happen. What is important is how you respond to them, and what is important is how you learn from them.
James Glover Yeah, absolutely. And what you're speaking about there resonates with some of the casework that I do, and I can think of one example recently where the senior leadership team had the courage to engage with us and look at what had gone wrong with a gentleman's care, and being able to explain to the Trust what had happened and how this individual had been affected by what had gone wrong was a really powerful tool of change, and was able to get the service improvement so it didn't happen to others. But importantly, also put it right for this gentleman, and he had the acknowledgement of what had gone wrong in his care. And it had been several years that he had been experiencing the distress from the feelings he'd gone through. But by being listened to and having senior leadership recognise what had happened, really was able to resolve things for him. I think that was a really powerful complaint that just highlighted it's not just one individual at the Trust that you speak to about what happened. If you can speak to people in charge, then they can lead the Trust down a different path and stop it happening for other people, exactly.
Paula Sussex Yeah. And James, I think you've just described pretty much the gold standard that we want all organisations to get to, because it has to be led from the top, but present all the way through the organisation. So that culture of complaints are a gift, accepting that things will go wrong, owning up to things going wrong, but then quickly moving to fixing them for the individual and where it applies. Fixing it for all of the patients or service users to follow is so important, and probably like you, it is quite life-affirming when you see one of those organisations. It is a leadership culture.
Happily, I think the recent case of Mr Tobierre and his daughter Charlotte, who persisted with their complaint into the Windrush Compensation Scheme, our work with the caseworker there in the Home Office identified that there was a flaw in the way they were assessing his compensation, that his loss of private pension should have been taken into that calculation. And making that change for other Windrush victims coming down the track, hugely important. So a good instance there of the Home Office identifying where something was wrong, albeit perhaps catalysed by our own investigation, but responding to it quite quickly and making amends. So important and usually, we look to the leaders to ensure that organisations feel safe to do that all the way through the investigation.
James Glover It sounds like that's really the start of a culture of listening, but also of acting, in a sense that that individual caseworker listened to us after we'd heard Mr. Tobierre’s case, and then senior leadership listen to an individual member of staff, we're making broader changes that affect so many people.
Paula Sussex Exactly.
James Glover Yeah, I think acknowledging where things go wrong is the first step to putting things right, and I know that in my own casework, I've seen examples where sometimes it's taking action to put things right that organisations really struggle with.
So in one example, I can think of DWP (Department of Work and Pensions) had let down this lady who missed out on some benefits that she was entitled to, and as a stroke patient, these benefits were of a massive importance to her. But DWP was hiding behind policy and legislation to try and avoid putting things right, and it took us to go in to really see what had happened and tell the DWP that this wasn't right and that it was really having an effect on this lady's life, and that the reasons it was giving weren't strong enough to not return this lady to the place that she was in or should have been in.
And I think it's as well as not just understanding when things go wrong but understanding how to put things right that organisations sometimes miss out on. And how do you expect our office to communicate how valuable complaints are we've just spoken about the power of them. How do you think we as an organisation in the future can help organisations improve their complaint handling both in terms of acknowledging when things have gone wrong but also acting to put things right?
Paula Sussex As I said at the start, I think we can do more with organisations, and Rebecca and I are keen to be able to work with the senior leaderships of both health and the departments of state in our jurisdiction. I think that's extremely important. I think also the benefit of complaints. Complaints are a gift, I know as having been a service provider in the commercial sector, organisations spend a lot of money on identifying where they can improve or transform their services and their customers, their service users, their patients, are often a source of how it needs to be transformed. So seeing it genuinely as a gift, as a positive, as a way of shaping the necessary continuous improvement, as I say, or digital transformation programs, is incredibly important.
James Glover And much of my work is in health, and there's been a huge change in that sector, including the closure of NHS England, but Healthwatch as well, who supports patients in making complaints. Where do you see complaints in the future and how will they be involved in that change?
Paula Sussex So health, the health sector, is under perhaps a once in a generation change. We know that, James, we are sympathetic to it. However, if I look at the various plans to implement the health service of the future, I don't yet see enough of the patient voice or perhaps complaints figuring in the system. It will be something that we're paying close attention to.
You may have seen the acute trust rankings had very little focus on the patient experience. And then also, if we look at how the integrated care boards will be commissioning services going forward, as yet that document doesn't show the patient voice having enough prominence in it. So I think we will be working closely with all of those organisations, but also with the policymakers over the next few months to ensure that the patient voice, the patient experience, which is embedded in the 10 year plan, really comes through in the operation of the health service to come for the next generation.
James Glover Well, thank you so much for going into such important detail about where the Ombudsman is, where it's going in the future, how we've used our work to help others and how organisations can rely on that in the future as well. Thank you for joining us on the podcast today, Paula, and that's all we've got time for this episode.
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