Barriers to complaints

We started the new year off with our joint online seminar on tackling barriers to complaints with the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO). The event followed on the heels of an earlier in-person event with patient and service-user organisations held in Edinburgh in September 2023. 

The event brought together over 100 stakeholders from across the health and social care sector to discuss and explore the barriers that currently existing and can prevent patients and service uses from complaining. Along with our PHSO colleagues we wanted to share examples of innovative actions to widen and improve access to complaints services and to encourage and promote further joint work to tackle barriers to complaining. 

The event included speakers from National Voices and Healthwatch England who set the scene about the context for understanding the patient experience of making complaints and what patients want from complaints systems in the future. Attendees then went into themed breakout sessions to discuss particular types of barriers to complaining and possible short, medium and long term actions which could help to improve the experience of making complaints as well as the use complaints information is put to within the system to promote learning and improvement.

There were strong themes linking to the previous event looking at addressing health inequalities – it was clear that it isn’t possible to effectively address differential experiences in people’s access to and quality of care unless we know the problems they are encountering. Also, although the complaints system is complex and there are differences across organisations, there are clearly many shared barriers which could be tackle through collaborative action.   

Overall, it was a lively and useful event which has given us a lot to think about in terms of further action the PSA takes forward in this area during 2024/25 in line with our commitments in Safer care for all.