Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the complaints signposting available to those who self-fund their social care.

By law, all health and social care services must have a procedure for dealing efficiently with complaints, and anyone who has seen or experienced poor-quality care has the right to complain to the organisation that provided or paid for the care.

If an individual has raised a complaint and is not satisfied with the way a provider has dealt with their complaint, they may escalate it to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) who can investigate individual concerns. The LGSCO is the independent complaints lead for adult social care and investigates complaints from those receiving social care.

The Government has continued discussions with the LGSCO and the Care Quality Commission about how the regulator can most effectively support the signposting of self-funders to the LGSCO by private providers.