Department of Health

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Making Experiences Count - reform of the Health and Social Care complaints arrangements

This section provides information and advice about the Department of Health’s reforms to NHS health and social care complaints arrangements.

Early adopters

In the White Paper Our health, our care, our say, the Government made a commitment to implement a single comprehensive complaints process across health and social care by 2009, focussed on resolving complaints locally with a more personal and comprehensive approach to handling complaints. 

In order to support the development of the new approach as well as the practice and behaviours needed to deliver it successfully, new arrangements are being introduced through a programme of Early Adopters. These Early Adopter sites represent a wide variety of local settings, approaches to complaints handling and levels of performance.

The Early Adopter sites will still be operating within the current complaints legislative framework but, supported by the Making Experiences Count team at the Department of Health and each other, will develop their approaches to local resolution.  The aspiration for the Early Adopter programme is to identify the success factors, behaviours and tools in resolving the vast majority of complaints at a local level.  

Non-early Adopters

These organisations will continue to operate with their current complaints procedure until the intended switch over to the new arrangements in 2009.  However there will be lots of information coming out of the Early Adopter sites via this website and regular communications to all health and social care bodies in England, which these organisations can use to start to develop their own practices and prepare for the changes to the legislation in 2009.  There will also be opportunities for complaints managers, PALS managers and others connected with complaints handling across health and social care to share experience and strategies as well as support each other through the Voices for Improvement Action Network (VIAN). 

Advocates / public

Independent advocacy is an important means of providing support to complainants. In Making Experiences Count we indicated advocacy should be a right for anyone who needs support in raising a complaint about health or social care services.

Through the Early Adopter programme we will be looking at how independent advocacy can best be provided, comparing the different models that are currently in place. Our findings from the Early Adopter sites will help us to decide how advocacy will be provided in line with the new complaints arrangements in 2009.

Voices for Improvement Action Network (VIAN)

As part of its strategy for the integration of Adult Social Care and NHS complaints processes, the Department of Health has set up regional groups as the Voices for Improvement Action Network (VIAN). Their particular purposes vary, combining action learning, action research, knowledge management and reflective practice in a series of local group events that meet over time.  Because of this structure, VIAN provides a focused opportunity for peers across organisations to meet, share information and learn new approaches together. VIAN has been working on joint protocols to improve cooperation ahead of 2009.

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