Complaints about care and treatment
10. The law says a person needs to make their complaint to us within a year of becoming aware of the problem. We cannot investigate complaints brought to us after one year, unless there is a good reason. We have discussed this with Ms U to understand the reasons why she could not bring her complaint to us sooner. We have also considered the time the Trust has taken to respond to Ms U.
Being passed from doctor to doctor between 2016 and 2019
11. Ms U was unable to give us the exact date when she had cause to complain. This is what we call the date of knowledge. We therefore considered the date she made her complaint to the Trust (24 August 2018) as the very latest date of knowledge. She complained to us in November 2020. This meant this aspect of her complaint is around 14 months and one week outside our 12-month time limit.
Prescription of antidepressants in 2017
12. Ms U said the Trust prescribed her antidepressants in 2017. We consider 2017 to be her date of knowledge. She complained to us in November 2020. This meant this aspect of her complaint is around two years outside our 12-month time limit.
Time taken for local complaints process to be completed
13. We have seen the Trust took one year and seven months to complete the local complaints process, from August 2018 to March 2020. We saw indications of failings in how it dealt with her second letter of complaint, dated 25 October 2018 (see below), so we have taken the Trust’s significant delays into account. It would not be appropriate for us to penalise Ms U for the Trust’s delays as we can see both Ms U and her advocate were actively chasing the Trust, as well as using our service to help her get a final response. Our focus is therefore on any additional delays and the reasons for those.
Complainant’s explanation for the delay
14. The Trust gave Ms U a final complaint response on 25 March 2020. She came to us on 2 November 2020. We spoke with her on two occasions about this seven-month delay and the reasons for it.
15. In our call on 28 January 2022, Ms U said she had surgery in 2019, and was then at work and too busy to deal with everything. In our call on 14 March 2022, she explained she was not sure why she waited to bring her complaint to us.
16. On both calls she referred to having to wait for a response from us and waiting for her advocate to contact her after her previous caseworker directed her to an advocacy service. These reasons cover dates after she brought her complaint to us (November 2020 onwards). They do not explain the delay between March 2020 and November 2020.
17. We have considered the significant delays caused by the Trust, from August 2018 until March 2020. We appreciate Ms U had no control over these delays.
18. We have also considered what Ms U has told us about the seven-month delay before she brought her complaint to us. We have not seen any reasons to put our time limit aside. We appreciate Ms U was busy and do not doubt that she had a lot going on at the time. We do not consider this would be a strong enough reason for us to put our time limit to one side. We are satisfied Ms U could have contacted us after she got the Trust’s final response in March 2020, and at the very latest July 2020, when we resumed our casework after our COVID-19 pause.
19. We therefore cannot investigate Ms U’s complaints about her care and treatment as her complaints are outside our 12-month time limit, and we have not seen any strong reasons to put this time limit to one side.
20. We hope this explains the thorough consideration we have given to our decision not to investigate these aspects of Ms U’s complaint.
Complaint handling delays
21. Ms U complains the Trust did not respond to her complaint in a timely manner. She says she felt ignored and stressed out by this. She says her and her advocate had to chase the Trust a significant number of times, did not hear back, and eventually had to approach us to get a final response to her complaint. She wants compensation from the Trust for the distress caused, and to recognise the impact she suffered because of these delays.
22. We have reviewed the Trust’s complaint file and correspondence Ms U has sent us. We can see that Ms U raised a second follow-up complaint/request for a meeting, via her advocate, on 25 October 2018. The Trust responded to this complaint on 25 March 2020, one year and five months later.
23. We have seen the Trust did not acknowledge the October 2018 complaint until 19 July 2019. It then said it would get back to Ms U in 14 days, explaining how it would deal with her complaint. We have seen the Trust did not get back to Ms U despite follow-up emails/contact from her and her advocate.
24. We have seen evidence Ms U and her advocate were actively chasing the Trust for a response via emails and phone calls. They attempted on several occasions to get updates from the Trust but the Trust either did not respond or did not give a substantive update.
25. As Ms U did not get a response from the Trust, she came to us in November 2019. We closed her case as her complaint was not ready for us because the local complaints process had not ended. We asked the Trust to respond to her complaint and the case was closed in December 2019.
26. In January 2020 the Trust acknowledged it had not dealt with Ms U’s outstanding concerns. The Trust sent Ms U a response to her October 2018 complaint, on 25 March 2020.
27. We have seen a copy of the Trust’s complaints policy, which is available online. It says the Trust will aim to respond to complaints within 25 working days or it will negotiate a timescale with the complainant. We have seen the Trust did not do this. It responded one year and five months later and did not agree a timescale with Ms U. The Trust said it would inform her within 14 days of how it would deal with her complaint, and it did not.
28. The Trust’s policy may have been updated since this date, so we have also reviewed our ‘Principles of Good Complaint Handling’. The ‘customer service’ principle says we expect organisations to deal with complainants promptly. We have seen the Trust did not deal with Ms U’s complaint promptly as it took one year and five months to respond.
29. The ‘acting fairly and proportionately’ principle says we expect organisations to investigate complaints thoroughly. We have seen that the Trust did not take steps to thoroughly investigate Ms U’s October 2018 complaint until we asked it to in December 2019. We have therefore seen indications of failings here as the Trust did not act in line with its policy or our principles.
30. Ms U has said she would like compensation as an outcome to this complaint. This is to recognise the impact the complaint handling delays had on her.
31. We consider Ms U’s impact to be level three on the scale in ‘Our guidance on financial remedy’. This includes ‘very poor complaint handling e.g., delays of over a year: or with delays of over six months combined with qualitative failures such as provision of incorrect or incomplete responses’. Based on our scale, we therefore consider that £500 would be an appropriate remedy.
32. We can agree a resolution with an organisation if we believe we can achieve a satisfactory result for the complainant with minimal intervention. An investigation would not be necessary if the Trust agreed a resolution at this stage.
33. We wrote to the Trust on 17 March 2022 explaining the above and proposing a resolution of £500. The Trust emailed on 25 March 2022 to acknowledge the delays and agreed on 28 March 2022 to pay Ms U £500 compensation.
34. This resolution is in line with our ‘putting things right’ principle of our ‘Principles of Good Complaint Handling’. The financial remedy is a recognition of the distress and frustration Ms U suffered due to the complaint handling delays. The compensation gives Ms U an appropriate and proportionate remedy to her complaint.
35. We will not be investigating this aspect of Ms U’s complaint further as we have agreed a resolution with the Trust.