Dudley councillors are to be told that complaints about children’s services were up by 18 per cent on last year.
A report for the authority’s Social Care and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee reveals 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 does 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The report also says 22 corporate complaints were withdrawn, and children’s services received 16,861 contacts, so only 1.79 per cent of interactions with the public resulted in a complaint.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 successful 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 on 2023/24, a total of 75 were fully upheld and 48 were partially upheld.
Overall a total of less than one percent 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 percent of complaints were upheld in those three service areas.
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