Management of Complaints
POLICY STATEMENT
The Service will maintain a complaints and grievance management system to ensure that all Educators, families and community members know that complaints and grievances will be taken seriously and investigated promptly and fairly. Complaints and grievances will be investigated and documented in a timely manner. Our complaints and grievance management system will be promoted in the parent handbook and on our website. We will identify complaints and grievances as opportunities to improve the quality of our service.
PROCEDURE
The Service will support an individual’s right to complain and will help them to make their complaints clear and try to resolve them.
A complaint can be informal or formal. It can be anything which an individual thinks is unfair or which makes them unhappy with the Service.
Every parent will be provided with clear written guidelines detailing the grievance procedure, in the parent handbook.
All confidential conversations with individuals who have a complaint or grievance will take place in a quiet place away from children, other parents or Staff not involved.
If an individual has a complaint or comment about the Service, they will be encouraged to talk to the Nominated Supervisor, who will arrange a time to discuss their concerns and come to a resolution to address the issue.
If the complaint is not handled at this level to the satisfaction of the person making the complaint they should discuss the issue with the Convenor or liaison person of the Management committee, either in writing or verbally.
The Management will discuss the issue with the Nominated Supervisor and develop a strategy for resolving the problem. This may be discussed further with the individual or if necessary a meeting will be organised with the Nominated Supervisor and the individual to resolve the problem.
All complaints will be recorded and dated indicating the issue of concern and how it was resolved. All information on complaints and grievances will include evidence that complaints are investigated within satisfactory timeframes and have led to amendments to policies and procedures where required.
The Nominated Supervisor or Management will inform the person making the complaint of what has been decided regarding the issue. Staff will also be informed of any relevant issues of which they may need to be aware or address.
This could be done verbally or, if the issue has been dealt with on a more formal basis, then the Convenor or Nominated Supervisor will write personally to the individual making the complaint.
If any complaint cannot be resolved internally to the person’s satisfaction, external options will be offered such adjudication by an unbiased third party.
CONSIDERATIONS
National Regulation 168 Education and Care services must have policies and procedures.
National Quality Standard 7
Reviewed August 2019
