Who do you complain to about care homes?
Complain first to the care home or the organisation that paid for the care, since every health and social care service must have a complaints procedure by law. If the response is unsatisfactory, complaints about adult social care can be escalated to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. The Care Quality Commission cannot take complaints forward for you, but you should still report poor care to it.
A common misconception is that the Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the complaints body for care homes in England. It is not. The CQC is clear that it cannot take forward complaints on your behalf. What it does with the information you share is use it to help protect other people from going through the same experience. So the question splits into two separate actions: making your complaint, and reporting what happened.
[2]Step one: complain to the provider or the funder
If you have experienced or seen poor care, you have a right to complain to the organisation that provided or paid for the care. By law, all health and social care services must have a procedure for dealing efficiently with complaints. NHS guidance agrees that you should start a care-home complaint with the home's operator or manager. If a council funds the care and its response is unsatisfactory, contact that council. The way you make a complaint depends on the type of service involved.
[2][1]Step two: escalate if the response is unsatisfactory
If the provider's or funder's complaints process does not resolve matters, there is a next step. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman investigates adult social care complaints, covering both self-funded and council-funded care. That makes it the recognised escalation route when the informal and formal stages with the home or council have run their course.
[1]Step three: tell the regulator what you saw
Reporting to the CQC is a separate act from complaining. You can give feedback on care, report poor care you witnessed or experienced, and report a service you believe is operating without CQC registration. None of these replaces your formal complaint to the provider, but the information feeds the regulator's picture of the service. The CQC also asks that communication with its staff remains respectful, and it may restrict contact if behaviour becomes abusive or threatening.
[2]A concrete example
Suppose your relative lives in a residential care home and you believe staff are not responding to calls for help. You would first ask the home for its complaints procedure and submit a formal complaint, keeping a dated copy. If the home is part of a large group, the complaint may escalate to a head office. Separately, you would tell the CQC what you saw, understanding that it will not pursue the complaint for you. Before complaining, it is also worth checking the home's current inspection record and, crucially, the date of that inspection: a rating is a snapshot of one visit, and thousands of services carry published ratings from visits more than six years old, by which point the home may have changed hands or manager entirely.
[2][3]A practical next step
Write down what happened, with dates, and request the home's complaints procedure in writing. File the complaint, then separately report the poor care to the CQC. If the response is unsatisfactory and the care was self-funded or council-funded, take the complaint to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. If you are unsure of the home's registration status or latest inspection, check its published record and note the inspection date alongside the rating before you rely on either.
[2][1][3]Sources and dates
- https://www.nhs.uk/social-care-and-support/care-services-equipment-and-care-homes/care-homes/ · accessed 2026-10-18
- https://www.cqc.org.uk/contact-us/how-complain/complain-about-service-or-provider · accessed 2026-10-18
- https://carefacts.co.uk/ · accessed 2026-10-18