This is the question nobody wants to ask on a visit. You are standing in the lounge, the manager is being lovely, and the last thing you want to do is say “what if it goes wrong?”
But it is the most important question you can ask. Because the answer tells you more about a care home than any brochure or rating ever will.
Why we want you to ask
A care home that gets defensive when you ask about complaints is a care home with something to protect. A care home that welcomes the question is one that knows complaints make things better.
We would rather hear from you when something is not right than have you sitting at home worrying about it. A concern raised early is almost always easier to resolve than one that has been building for months.
What actually happens when you raise a concern
If something is not right, the first step is simple: tell us. You can speak to Laura, our Registered Manager, directly. You can call, email, or say it in person. There is no form to fill in first. There is no waiting period. If something needs to change, we want to know now.
For straightforward concerns, Laura will talk to you, understand the issue, and act on it. If the resolution needs a change in someone’s care, that change happens immediately. You will be told what we have done and why.
For more formal complaints, we follow a structured process. Your complaint is acknowledged in writing. It is investigated properly. You receive a written response that explains what we found, what we are doing about it, and what we have changed to prevent it happening again.
That process is not just something we say we do. It is documented, it is audited, and the CQC will look at it when they inspect us. They want to see that complaints lead to real change, not just a letter saying sorry.
What we will never do
We will never make you feel awkward for raising a concern. We will never dismiss it as a misunderstanding without looking into it properly. We will never treat a complaint as a problem to manage rather than an opportunity to improve.
If we get something wrong, we will tell you what happened and what we are doing to fix it. Duty of candour is not just a regulatory requirement. It is how we operate.
What if you are not satisfied with our response
If you raise a complaint and you are not happy with how we have handled it, you have options. You can escalate to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. You can contact the CQC directly if you believe there is a regulatory concern. And you can always contact the social worker or commissioner involved in your loved one’s placement.
We would rather resolve things ourselves, and in most cases we do. But you should know that independent routes exist and we will never obstruct them.
What this tells you about us
Every care home has a complaints policy. Most of them sit in a folder and never get looked at. Ours is there because we want families to know the door is always open, even if they rarely need to walk through it.
In practice, most concerns at Catherine House are resolved with a conversation. The formal process exists for when it is needed, and we take it seriously when it is. But the reason complaints are rare is not because we discourage them. It is because a small team that knows every person well tends to spot problems early and fix them before they become complaints.
When the CQC inspects us, we will show them every concern and complaint we have received and every action we took as a result. That record is evidence that we listen, whether the list is long or short.