Healthwatch Rochdale shares feedback with council to help make improvements to the Adult Care service

Healthwatch Rochdale (HWR), the local Health and Social Care watchdog, has worked in partnership with Rochdale Borough Council’s Adult Care team to address issues and concerns some service users and organisations have highlighted when attempting to call the Adult Care telephone number (0300 303 8886).

The Adult Care telephone number is used by people wishing to contact adult care with any number of issues related to the care received by older people or disabled adults in the borough. People can also phone this number to make a safeguarding alert because they are concerned about the welfare of an older or vulnerable individual. HWR have gathered feedback relating to the above issue and findings showed that, on some occasions, people had experienced difficulty when trying to contact Adult Care directly on the specified number which is provided on their website. Further research gave HWR the knowledge that a small number of calls where taking up to 20 minutes to be answered when trying to make a safeguarding alert.

Moni Noszkay, Senior Advocate at the Your Voice Rochdale service, run by Together for Mental Wellbeing, shared her experience: “The longest time that I am aware of a Together Your Voice Advocate waiting to be connected to the Adult Care telephone number is 20 minutes – this was during a meeting with a client who was not impressed at the length of time we were on hold. My colleague, who was leading the meeting, decided to end the call and ring back using the Learning Disability Team option as we have found that getting to speak to that team is much quicker. He was connected within a few minutes and asked for the information to be taken and transferred to the regular duty team.”

HWR raised the above incident and concerns with the council and asked that a formal reply was to be made to HWR within 20 working days in accordance with the statutory requirement.

Kate Jones (Chief Executive Officer, HWR) said: “The Adult Care team responded within the 20 working days. The information they provided gave HWR the reassurance that the concerns raised were being taken very seriously. After meeting with Jane Timson (Head of Safeguarding and Practise Assurance) I feel this issue is now resolved and the service has improved.”

Changes were made to the way calls are dealt with by the adult care team and as a result:

• Calls are being answered promptly within four minutes. 
• Complaint rates have decreased as a result of calls being answered quicker.
• Abandoned call rate has dropped by approximately 40%.

Ms Jones added: "Although these result are only highlighting the first week of the trial period were the new telephone system is in place. It gives HWR the confidence that measures have been put in place and a system fit for the needs of service users and organisations is now in place."

Sheila Downey, Head of Adult Care at Rochdale Borough Council, said: “Adult care is an exceptionally busy service, which receives on average between 500 and 700 calls a day. Unfortunately as a result of this it appears that a small number of people were left waiting on the line. As soon as we became aware of this we immediately made changes to the way we deal with calls made to adult care so people can now get through to us much more quickly. We would encourage anybody who would like to discuss the care of an older or disabled person in the borough to contact us on 0300 303 8886.”

HWR says it will continue to remain in contact with the Adult Care team during the trial period in order to "confirm the necessary measures are in place over a longer period for an improved service".