Complaints about health and social care

The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman investigates complaints about child and adult social care. The Health Service Ombudsman investigates complaints about health services.

People may have a complaint about services provided by both health and social care organisations. Instead of having to complain separately to both ombudsmen, we have a Joint Working Team that can investigate these issues together.

This gives you:

  • a single investigator who can look at the whole case
  • a quicker and more focused investigation

It also means the different organisations being investigated only have to deal with a single person.

It does not matter which Ombudsman you originally complain to.

The Joint Working Team is managed by us but has investigators from both ombudsmen. They are trained to investigate health and social care issues.

We cannot investigate every complaint that comes to us. We carry out an initial assessment to find out:

  • what is being complained about
  • the organisations involved
  • if there are barriers to us investigating

We will let you know the outcome of the assessment as soon as we can. If your complaint can be investigated, it will then be allocated to an investigator who will carry out the detailed investigation work.

Are you thinking of complaining to us?

Find out how to make a complaint to us by reading our step by step process

If you are an existing complainant please

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