Ms Carol Grogan:

We welcome feedback from people who use services, as well as their families, friends and members of the public, in relation to any of the services we regulate or monitor. They can contact us in a variety of ways; email and phone are the most preferred when we look back on our statistics. Some 189 concerns were received by email by the end of the first two quarters of this year, while 152 were received by phone.

We have a team. We talk to people and if they give us their number we will ring them back so that we can fully understand the nature of their concern. If people write to us, we will contact them as well. We will take anonymous feedback because we understand that some people will not want to give their name. In those cases, it is unverified information but we will then seek to verify that, either through an assurance report from the provider or through an inspection. In some cases, we may find that there is non-compliance in the areas that the person has identified to us. In other areas, it may be something about which we have already been notified. On my social care, there are certain notifications that must be notified to me. We can then look at whether it is has been notified and we can do a triangulation between the information that we have received from the provider.

Our information concerns team undertook a complete review of the information we give to people. We have provided and developed booklets for children's services, healthcare services, disability services and older person's services. They are available on our website, and we also issue them to people.

We also receive concerns about areas that are not within our remit. In those cases, we try to signpost the person to the organisation that might be best suited to deal with their issue. If not, we can try to do a bit of detective work ourselves and then ring the person back. Then, at least they will not be ringing around a number of public services trying to find where to direct their concern.