Excelcare | Compliments and Complaints

Compliments

At Excelcare, we recognise the importance of recording the kind words and letters of thanks which we receive from residents, their family and friends and visiting professionals.

We love to hear about how we have made people smile through our services, and we will always share your feedback with the individual or team your compliment relates to, and reward their hard work. Our team are proud of the job they do and these compliments make a huge difference to their working lives.

We also value positive feedback as this helps us to plan for the future of our services and to meet the needs of those we care for.

If you would like to leave a compliment about your positive experiences, please fill in our contact form, send in your comments via post, or leave us a review on carehome.co.uk.

Complaints

Complaints are also welcome as an opportunity to improve what we do and how we do it. We are dedicated to:

Being customer-focused
Being open and accountable
Acting fairly and proportionately
Putting things right
Seeking to learn and continuously improve

A full copy of our Complaints Policy can be obtained from the Home or Service Manager.

If you are unhappy about any aspect of the services we provide, please talk to us in the first instance; we want to resolve any issues quickly and simply. By talking to a team member you usually deal with, the Nurse/Senior in charge, or the home/service manager, we can often clear up any issues quickly. They will discuss the problem with you and agree with you what to do next.

You may prefer to write or send an email to or to phone them instead. If it is not possible to sort out your problem in this way and you wish to make a formal complaint about an Excelcare service, you can do so in a variety of ways:

Complete our online contact form which can be found here
Call our central team on 0800 141 2168
Email us
Send a letter directly to the care home or our head office.

We will do our best to help people who do not speak English, or require a copy of our Complaints Policy in another format such as Large Print, or need mediated access.

How your complaint will be investigated and dealt with

When we receive your formal complaint, we will send you a letter within three working days to confirm receipt and outline what you can expect from us including expected timescales.

Typically, the complaint will be investigated by the Manager at the care home or service where the complaint relates to. If the complaint involves the manager, then it will be dealt with by a more senior member of our team.

At this stage, we aim to fully investigate the complaint and respond to you, in writing within 28 working days. In more complex investigations, however, this may take longer. If this is likely to be the case, we will write to you within 20 working days of us receiving your complaint, outlining why we anticipate a delay and, wherever possible, giving you an estimated response time. We will then keep you updated on progress every 14 working days until we have completed our investigation and have responded to you formally, in writing.

If you remain dissatisfied with the outcome of our investigation, you can request in writing, that your complaint is taken further in our process. We will write to you to confirm we have taken your complaint to the next stage in our process.

At this point, a more senior member of the team will re-examine the initial complaint, how the investigation was undertaken and review the evidence which was used to base the outcome of the initial complaint.

In instances where a complaint is taken further, we will follow the same response times as outlined previously.

If you still remain dissatisfied with the outcome of our investigation, you can forward your case onto the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, or the Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman, if you or your loved one’s place with us is funded by continuing healthcare.

We expect all our team members to conduct themselves professionally and to deal with any concerns or complaints without prejudice and in line with our outlined complaints process.

Raising your concerns

There are a number of ways you can raise your concerns outside our normal complaints process, starting with the relevant Regional Director for the related home. Their details and areas are listed below and they can be contacted to raise concerns, 24 hours a day.

In these instances, we commit to respect and safeguard your identity and interests at all times.

If you are comfortable sharing your contact details with the Regional Director, we will keep this information confidential and use it to keep you updated on progress with any resulting investigation, its findings and actions. In the event you are not satisfied with any aspect of the investigative process or its outcome, you will be given information about options available to you, in order to take their concerns further.