Section 1 - Being Complaint Ready

Ensuring an effective complaints policy and procedure

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.

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Key principles for managing complaints

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.

1. Rights – People have a fundamental right to speak up about the supports they receive.
2. Respect – People are treated with respect and dignity throughout the process. This includes respecting their privacy and maintaining the confidentiality of their information.
3. Fairness – People are treated fairly and their concerns are dealt with in an unbiased and objective manner.
4. Accessible – Information should be provided in ways that enable people who use the service to know how to make a complaint.
5. Person centred – The complaints system is flexible to respond to individual needs and to consider what is important to and important for people receiving supports.
6. Responsive – There is a clear process for ensuring that complaints are handled in a timely way and people are kept informed of the progress of their complaint.
7. Natural Justice – People involved in a complaint need to be given a fair opportunity to respond to issues raised and to present their views.
8. Accountable – Your process for resolving complaints is clearly outlined so people know what to expect.
9. Excellence – The complaints management system is part of a quality culture that sees the complaint as an opportunity for improvement.

Ten useful tips for an effective complaints policy and procedure

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:

1. List the organisational values that will underpin how complaints are viewed and how the organisation will respond to complaints.
2. Reinforce your commitment to quality service delivery and to anyone being able to speak up about what’s working and not working with the supports being provided.
3. Clearly state that no-one will be adversely affected as a result of making a complaint or a complaint being made on their behalf.
4. Include an acknowledgement that the supports provided may not always meet people’s expectations and/or that mistakes do happen and that you value people letting you know when this occurs so you can improve the supports you offer.
5. Explain how you will support people to complain if they require assistance (or will refer them to someone who can assist them).
6. Ensure that people are clearly informed of their right to seek advice or assistance at any point in the process.
7. Reassure people they can make complaints without being identified. Whilst not ideal, this should be an option in order to encourage people to speak up.
8. Clearly outline how the process will be handled and the anticipated timeframes involved (including keeping the person updated if the timeframes are not met).
9. Include a process and timeline for reviewing the outcomes of the complaint and what learnings or service improvements occurred as a result.
10. Include contacting the person who made the complaint after it has been finalised to seek feedback on their experience of the process.

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.

Making it happen

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.

How ready is everyone in your organisation to handle complaints effectively? How open are staff to not only resolving a complaint, but learning from complaints as well?

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.

Is there a direct link between your organisation’s complaints data and quality plan?

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