How to share your feedback about social care and childcare services in Wales

Your feedback helps us improve the quality of care and support provided by registered services and local authorities. We want to hear about what's working well and what needs to improve.

Who can give feedback 

Anyone can share feedback with us, including:

• People who use social care, childcare or play services in Wales
• Family, friends or neighbours
• Staff members (please see our whistleblowing guidance)
• Professionals who have contact with a service

What you can tell us about

• Social care and childcare services (both positive and negative experiences)
• Services that may be operating without proper registration
• Our own performance and approach

What happens to your feedback 

We use all feedback to plan our work and inspections. For registered services, your feedback helps us decide when to inspect and what areas to focus on. For local authority work, it informs our regular contact with councils and shapes our work programme.

Healthcare services 

If you have feedback about healthcare services like hospitals or GP practices, please contact Healthcare Inspectorate Wales.

Complaints

It is important to be aware we can't look into individual complaints ourselves or sort out problems between you and your service provider or local council. This is because every service must have its own complaints procedure and it is usually best for you to raise your concerns with the manager or a senior person at the service first. They can investigate and hopefully resolve your issue. For social care services (including social services) Llais can support you through this process. 

If you're still unhappy after the service has investigated, you can contact the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales at www.ombudsman.wales.

Provide feedback or raise a concern online

To tell us about a registered service:

1. Go to our service directory
2. Search for the service you want to report
3. Click 'provide feedback'
4. Complete the feedback form

If you have concerns about the quality of care, after clicking 'provide feedback', select the 'raise concern' option on the form.

You can also raise a concern about a local authority social service on our website.

Prefer to speak to someone?

If you would prefer to speak to us, we have a dedicated number for reporting concerns: 0300 7900 126

Callers who select the Welsh language option will be able to speak with bilingual staff. If you write to us in Welsh, we will respond in Welsh.

Confidentiality

If you raise a concern with us, we will treat this information in confidence. You don't have to provide any personal details, such as your name or contact details. However, if we can't contact you for further information, this may limit our ability to investigate and restrict what action we can take.

Alternatively, you can tell us who you are but ask us to keep your identity confidential from the registered service or local authority and we will respect your wishes wherever possible. However, if the information relates to safeguarding or a possible criminal offence we will pass on the information (including your details) to the relevant safeguarding authorities, to ensure people’s safety.

It is important to be aware that if you have already raised your concern with the service, if we contact them to gather more information, whilst we will maintain your confidentiality, the service may realise you have contacted us. 

What we do with your personal information, who we may need to share it with, how long we hold it for and what your rights are in relation to it, are set out in our privacy notice. 

For staff working in a social care or childcare service, if you know about any poor practices at work, you can report it to us. We protect whistleblowers under the Public Interest Disclosure Act. We cannot get involved in employment disputes. For more information please see link to our whistleblowing guidance.

Safeguarding concerns

If you're concerned that a child or adult is experiencing or at risk of harm, abuse or neglect, you should contact your local social services safeguarding team immediately. 

If the person is receiving a social care or childcare service, please also let us know as it helps us as we may work with the safeguarding team on the issue.

You can find out more information about safeguarding here Information for the public - Where can I get support? 

Reporting unregistered services

If you think a service is operating without being legally registered with us, please let us know and we'll investigate to see if it needs to be regulated.

We have several actions we can take when concerns are shared with us. Our first step is to assess the risks the concern presents and consider what else we know about the service. If you have provided your contact details, an inspector may get in touch with you to ask for more details. We may also contact the service to find out more information as this helps us decide our most appropriate course of action. We always prioritise and respond quickly where people may be at risk of or have experienced harm.

We will always consider your experiences as part of our activity and inspection planning but depending on the issue you share with us, there are several actions we may take. These include:

• making an urgent referral to the local authority safeguarding team or to the police
• asking the service to look into the issues you shared and let us know the outcome of this to inform the planning of our next inspection 
• carrying out an urgent inspection 
• keeping a record of the issues you raised to inform the planning of our next inspection 
• signposting you to another agency who are better placed to address the issues you have raised
• suggesting, if you have not done so already, to make a complaint directly to the service or local authority 
• sharing the information with other authorities if there are serious issues and coordinating actions with them.

If you shared your concern with us online and provided your contact details, you will receive an automated email to confirm we have received it. 

If you phone us, we will give you a reference number during your call.

If you write to us, we will send an acknowledgement letter to let you know we have received it. 

Once we have looked into your concern, we will write to you to set out what, if any, actions we are taking. 

What happens if your concern leads to an inspection?

We write a report about every inspection we carry out. 

If your concern leads us to inspect a registered service, the report probably won't specifically mention the feedback you provided. This might be disappointing, but please be assured that we do consider all feedback we receive. You should be able to see the broader themes from your concerns reflected in our inspection findings.

We publish most reports following an inspection on our website. Simply search our directory of registered care services), open the relevant provider record and our latest inspection report should be accessible. You can also register to be informed each time an inspection report for the service is published on our website. 

If you share a concern about local authority social services, we will use the information you’ve provided to help inform our next scheduled review of performance of the local authority. You can view our published findings, judgements and recommendations for improvement on our website. 

Not happy with how we have handled your concern?

 If you are not satisfied with the way we have handled your concern, you may wish to raise a complaint with us. You can find our complaints policy here.

The following organisations may be able to provide helpful advice and support:

• Llais Cymru (External link)
• Citizen’s Advice Bureau (External link)
• Alzheimer’s Society Wales (External link)
• Older People’s Commissioner for Wales (External link)
• Children’s Commissioner for Wales (External link)
• Professional Association for Childcare & Early Years (External link)
• Children in Wales (External link)
• Play Wales (External link)
• Mudiad Meithrin National Office (External link)
• Early Years Wales (External link)
• Clybiau Plant Cymru Kids Clubs (External link)
• National Day Nurseries Association (External link)