At Your Service: New Good Practice Report Published
A new thematic report showcasing good practice across the Welsh public sector has been published by the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales.
At Your Service: A Good Practice Guide is the fifth thematic report issued by Nick Bennett, the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales, and compliments previous reports that looked at out of hours care in Welsh hospitals, hospital discharge arrangements, poor complaint handling and poor records management.
Unlike the other reports which looked at poor practice by public bodies in Wales, the latest thematic report focuses on positive examples of good practice, during a time when, due to the pandemic, public services are facing unprecedented pressure.
The report makes five main recommendations:
- Public services to focus on identifying and extending good practice in their organisations, with actions at strategic and operational levels.
- Organisations to make good practice and information sharing a standard agenda item in departmental/team meetings.
- Public services to consider incorporating information from the Ombudsman’s casebooks/“Our Findings” into training for service delivery and complaints handling staff.
- Public services to take up the offer of complaints handling training from the Ombudsman’s Complaints Standards team.
- Consideration is given to the creation of a portal for cross-sector sharing of good practice.
Commenting on the report, Public Services Ombudsman for Wales, Nick Bennett, said:
“The inevitable repercussions of COVID-19 will be felt by Wales, and the rest of the world, for many years and as budgets are tightened and demands for services increase, it is more important than ever that public service delivery is effective and provides value for money.
“The time is right for me to broaden my Improvement Agenda to share not only lessons to be learned when things have gone wrong, but also good practice identified in my casework.
“It is particularly pleasing to find examples of good practice in the cases that come to me, and I am keen to make sure that I share these positive examples, too.”
To read the report, click here.