Torbay Council welcomes feedback from all its Service Users and persons who wish to make a comment, complaint or compliment about the services we provide. We would like to hear from you if you feel we could do things better.

Adult Social Care

Comments or complaints relating to Adult Social Care are dealt by the Torbay Care Trust, if you want to make a comment or complaint to the Torbay Care Trust please view their website for further information and contact details. A link to the Torbay Care Trust's complaints page can be found under the External Links panel.

Children's Social Care

This information tells you how to make a complaint which relates to the Social Care of Children and Young People. We are committed to providing a high quality customer focused representations and complaints procedure. Details of our commitment are set out in our Children’s Services Complaints and Representations Policy.

Details of who may use the procedure and what can and cannot be complained about are set out in Summary of the Complaints and Representations Procedure.

A person who is not entitled to use this procedure may be eligible to access the Council’s Corporate Complaints Procedure and / or the Local Government Ombudsman.

If you wish to make a comment, complaint or suggestion relating to Children's Social Care , please get in touch with our Customer Services Support Officer (Children's Services) using the details from the Contact Us panel.

Provision of advocacy and support

We have a designated complaints manager who, with the assistance of the customer services support officer, is responsible for ensuring complaints are dealt with effectively and speedily. These posts are independent of the operational line management of services and direct service providers.

During the course of making a complaint a child or young person may request assistance of an advocate. We arrange this through Children’s Rights Torbay, who work with children and young people aged 10 and over to ensure they are listened to and have their say.

Time limit for making a complaint

Complaints that involved issues that happened more than a year ago are often difficult or impossible to investigate in a full and fair manner.

We will therefore not normally consider complaints made more than one year after the date of the event which gives rise to the complaint or the date the complainant became aware of it. Where it is decided not to consider a complaint, the complaints manager will confirm in writing the reasons for this decision. The complainant has the right to approach the Local Government Ombudsman.

Local Government Ombudsman

Complainants who remain dissatisfied with the outcome of their formal complaint and review panel hearing may access the Ombudsman.

For further information and for copies of the leaflet 'How to complain to the Local Government Ombudsman' may all be obtained from the Local Government Ombudsman's website, which a link to can be found under the External Links panel.

Other ways to complain

We hope our Complaints Procedure will help you to make your concerns known to us whenever you feel unhappy with our services. As well as using our formal complaints procedure you may wish to write to:

• The Strategic Director for Children
• Your local Councillor
• Your Member of Parliament
• The Local Government Ombudsman

• Children's Services - Annual Complaints Report 2006/07
• Children's Services - Annual Complaints Report 2005/06

• Children's Services - Children's Social Care EIA

• Children's Services - Complaints & Representations Policy
• Children's Services - Complaints & Representations Procedure
• Children's Services - Complaints & Representations Procedure - Summary