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Your approach to complaints needs to start with people’s rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Disability Services Act 2011 and other relevant laws and standards.
During the handling of a complaint, keeping in regular contact with the person using your service and the person who made the complaint, provides an opportunity to reinforce the value you place on their feedback and include them as active participants in the resolution of the issues raised.
Nothing about us without us.
To ensure you have an effective complaints system, check that your approach covers the following values and principles, which are drawn from experience and the Australian Standard for complaint handling.
Your complaints policy and procedure should outline your commitment to resolving complaints in a way that is underpinned by natural justice principles and is consistent with the principles of the Act. The policy and procedure should:
More resources can be found on our website in the Good practice guide and self audit tool and/or the Complaints Systems and Practice Self Audit – Quick Checklist.
While getting your policies and procedures right is important, their effectiveness is diminished if your staff don’t know how to access and implement them and people using your service, their families, carers and friends don’t know what they are.
People who use services, their families and carers should be supported in their right to complain, be aware of the complaints process and know what to expect from staff and the organisation if they do. This may include the provision of information regarding service users right to speak up.
Complaints may be raised at any level of an organisation, so it is important all staff are skilled in dealing with at least the initial response to a complaint. This may be as simple as staff being able to respectfully acknowledge the persons views and knowing who to refer the matter on to.
Staff who are likely to be responsible for co-ordinating the response to a complaint will require a more detailed understanding of complaints resolution approaches and may require specific training in how to handle complaints effectively.
Your organisation’s complaints data is a valuable source of information about where problems may be occurring. More than this, to make the most of any feedback you receive, all staff need to be open to receiving feedback as an important way of improving their ability to deliver high quality supports.
How do you know if the people you support are happy with the service they are receiving?
Research shows that only about four per cent of people dissatisfied with a service actually make a complaint (so for every complaint you receive there are probably another 24 people who haven’t told you about their concerns!)
Sai Global and Neill Buck, 2008
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