Dudley children’s services complaints up by 18 per cent
Dudley councillors are to be told that complaints about children’s services were up by 18 per cent on last year.
A report for Dudley Council's Social Care and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee reveals that from April 2024 until March 2025 the total number of complaints was 301 compared with 255 for the previous 12 months.
There were 49 statutory complaints where there was an alleged breach of legislation and 252 corporate complaints where the issue did not relate to a matter of law.
The report also says 22 corporate complaints were withdrawn, and children’s services received 16,861 contacts, so only 1.79 per cent of interactions with the public resulted in a complaint.
The number of successful statutory complaints fell compared to the previous year; 15 were upheld, and ten were partially upheld.
On the other hand, the number of upheld corporate complaints was up in 2023/24, a total of 75 were fully upheld, and 48 were partially upheld.
Overall, a total of less than one per cent of contacts between the public and the service resulted in a successful complaint.
The report, compiled by the Social Care Complaints Team, said: “One of the key objectives in the management of complaints is to identify and learn from complaints, comments and compliments, and to change, review or maintain practices and services accordingly.
“Relevant complaint responses that have been upheld or partially upheld continue to be shared with the Centre for Professional Practice.
“This ensures that these can be analysed and any learning identified and taken forward.”
The department has a statutory target of ten days to respond to a complaint, which can be extended by an extra ten days.
In the last administrative year, 2024/25, 49 per cent of statutory complaints got a response within the target ten days and 84 per cent within 20 days.
The three most complained about statutory issues were quality of service support, decisions and communication and 16 per cent of complaints were upheld in those three service areas.
