The number of social care complaints have jumped at Glasgow City Council – but a system which sees some recorded twice has been branded ‘idiotic’ by a councillor.
Care services complaints, which mostly involve home care, saw a large rise – up by 60 per cent in 2023 to 2024 from 277 to 445 compared to the previous year.
Volumes of social work complaints also increased by 28 per cent from 528 in the previous year to 676. Yesterday’s operational performance and delivery scrutiny committee heard there were significant increases in the numbers of complaints from homeless people.
A fresh grievance is recorded every time a complaint moves through different escalation stages – which means numbers reported are actually higher than the level of complaints received.
Expressing disbelief at the inaccurate numbers, councillor Ricky Bell said: “Every day I come to work I think today will be the day when I don’t hear something completely idiotic at Glasgow City Council. So far that day has not arrived.
“I cannot believe you are telling us today that we have a system whereby we double count our complaints and then don’t tell anybody that.”
The SNP councillor said he was also concerned by the increasing numbers of complaints.
The meeting heard complaints included home carers turning up late and that there was a total of 10,000 people receiving the service annually in the city with 4.4 million visits in a year.
An official said another issue is people don’t want agency workers, which results in objections from residents as well.
She also said recruitment is an issue particularly in the southside in home care and can be “challenging.”
SNP Councillor Chris Cunningham earlier pointed out to the committee how the council’s report said that a “complaint which proceeds from stage one to stage two is treated as two separate complaints.”
He said: “It does result in what amounts to a significant portion of double counting.”
A council official confirmed he was “right” and the issue is a result of the recording system used but a new planned replacement should get rid of the double counting and “report more accurately.”
Councillor Cunningham raised concerns about the council’s complaint results not being comparable to other local authorities.
He also described being “struck” by the “significant increase” in the homelessness category.
He told the meeting it wasn’t a “massive surprise” to him “given the stress the system is under.”
He said other numbers were less significant.
The council officer confirmed there were challenges in homelessness because of the scale of the number of applications with more people presenting as homeless due to Home Office changes.
Most of the complaints stemmed from people waiting in emergency accommodation.
A council report presented to councillors showed 30 per cent of social work complaints were upheld or partially upheld while the figure stands at 62 per cent for care services.
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