Compliments, suggestions, complaints

Your feedback shapes and maintains our service.

We are interested to hear of your views if you use our services as a professional, and if you refer your clients to us. We would be grateful if you could complete this short survey to enable us to reflect on the service we give to you.

Furthermore, we ask all of our clients to comment on their experience of using our services, and we do so for many reasons.

We think that it is essential to find out from you how we have done whilst supporting you, in order to:

• ensure we do it right
• ensure we learn from our mistakes
• ensure that we address any changes in your needs to continue to offer a service that is relevant to you
• ensure we praise those that have made a difference to you
• ensure we support and educate those that did not offer you the support we expect
• ensure we continue to receive support from funders and other agencies, to carry on with our work
• ensure we continue to receive support from funders, enabling us to offer most of our services free or at a low cost

It is an essential requirement that we have a formal process in place for you to raise any concerns or complaints, and you will see an outline of this below.

We equally find it important to register your compliments and suggestions, and we feed these back to our staff, managers and our Board, also.

COMPLIMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS

If you have a compliment or a suggestion, please use one of the following methods to let us know about it:

• Once your case closes, we send you our Feedback Questionnaires; please complete these in full and return them to us in the enclosed pre-paid envelope (you may receive one or two forms, depending on the service you have used)
• E-mail your comments to info@familymediationonline.co.uk, for the attention of the Manager
• Send a letter addressed to the Service Manager of our service (you will find our address in this booklet)
• Telephone either of our offices, and speak to our staff (you will find our telephone numbers in this booklet)
• Visit our Facebook page and “Like” us, and score your experience

Whichever means you use, it is useful to include the specific service(s) you used, the area where you attended our appointments, the staff member that you would like to praise and your overall experience of the service received.

You may wish to keep your identity confidential and not include any contact details with the information that you submit to us.

If, however you would like a follow-up from us, if you would be happy to share your story and experiences with the general public, or if you would like to “give back” by other means, please do include your name and contact details, and we will be in touch.

If you would like to show your appreciation by a donation to our service, we would very much appreciate this gesture. Please contact us via the above means, to arrange this.

COMPLAINTS

All clients have the right to formal consideration of matters about which they feel unhappy or aggrieved relating to all services provided by our service.

The below paragraphs explain what we do about complaints that may arise from counselling, mediation, contact centres and other services provided by us. It is based on our Policy, which you can request a copy of, at any time.

• At all stages of the process your complaint will be discussed with you and the person/s complained against. The process will be kept confidential from anyone not directly involved or part of the investigation process.
• We make every effort to ensure speedy and effective resolution of the matter.
• We keep a written record of the complaint process at all stages. All information relating to the complaint will remain in a confidential file for 6 years after which time it will be destroyed.
• We give both you and the individual complained against the right to appeal against any action decided on.
• Complaints are accepted within 3 years of the date of allegation and will be dealt with within 6 months of a formal complaint being raised.

There are times when someone who did not personally receive a service from us may have a complaint to make and a reasonable belief that the information they disclose is accurate. Any 3rd party complaint will be considered by the Service Manager* or Chairman of the Board. This includes those made verbally, in writing or anonymously. Complaints will be dealt with impartially and confidentially. They are accepted within 3 years of the date of allegation.

STAGES

Initial contact with the service – You may wish to discuss your concerns informally with the practitioner / worker, the Child Contact Centre Manager or the Mediation and Counselling Practice Manager, before you proceed to the next stage.

The client should contact the Service Manager in person, by phone, email or letter if they are not satisfied with the response they received as part of their initial, informal contact with the Service. The Service Manager will aim to resolve the matter with the client.

If the complaint is against the Service Manager, the client should write to the Service's Chairperson and someone from the Board of Management will aim to resolve the matter with them.

If matters are not resolved at this point, a written complaint can be lodged with the Service Chair. This should be marked Private and Confidential and posted to our main office in Dundee. The complaint will then be formally considered by one or more Board members.

Help with writing letters can be obtained from the Citizens Advice Bureau, Advocacy Service or similar organisation). The complaint will be formally considered and the client and anyone complained against will be advised of the outcome of the complaint in writing.  

Appeal Stage

An appeal can only progress if new evidence comes to light that was not considered when the original complaint was made, or if the correct process was not followed during the investigation of the complaint.

Complaint to COSCA

If the complaint is about our Counselling service, and you are not satisfied after the appeals process is completed, the complaint can be submitted directly to COSCA (at 16 Melville Terrace Stirling FK8 2NE). COSCA’s complaints procedure can be viewed at:
http://www.cosca.org.uk/new_documents.php?headingno=52&heading=Complaints

The role of COSCA would be to verify that the complaints and appeals procedures had been followed correctly and that there had not been a breach of the COSCA Statement of Ethics and Code of Practice in the course of investigating the complaint.

You may also access the Council's own complaints procedure only if the service you used is funded by your local authority. Please ask us if this is the case.

Ultimately, you have the right to raise any concerns with the National Ombudsman Service.

 

 

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