Resolving contracting complaints — responsibilities of funded service providers

This is an overview of the necessary components of your organisation’s complaints mechanism, as required by your contract with us.

At any time, we're able to request copies of the documents referred to, together with any other material relevant to any complaint.

Requirements for your complaint management process

Your organisation must have a documented complaint management process that is regularly reviewed and updated to deal with any complaint about the contracted services.

We recommend your process aligns with ours to allow streamlined and efficient resolution of complaints. This includes:

• Sending an acknowledgment letter to the complainant within 5 business days of receiving the complaint.
• Sending a resolution and closure letter to the complainant within 25 business days of receiving the complaint.
• If the matter will take longer than expected to investigate, sending a letter to the complainant explaining the reason, within 25 business days of receiving the complaint.
• Advising the complainant that if they are unsatisfied with the resolution or outcome of the complaint they may also complain to us or a relevant authority such as the NSW Ombudsman.
• Having a process to receive anonymous complaints.
• Making your complaint management process document publicly available.

As part of having an effective complaints mechanism as agreed in the contract, we expect your organisation to keep and maintain proper records, including a complaint register that records accurate details and allows tracking of all complaints received in relation to the contracted services. This may include a spreadsheet to log and summarise all complaints received, and a separate folder in your document management system for each complaint handled.

Note that these requirements for your complaint management process are based on the NSW Ombudsman’s best-practice guidelines. We are subject to the same requirements.

Requirements for information to be publicly available

Best practice complaint management is for your organisation’s website to include clear information for clients, their advocates and the general public about:

• what they can complain about
• how to make a complaint
• how to make an anonymous complaint
• when to involve our department or the NSW Ombudsman
• how to escalate a complaint already made, including escalating to us and other government departments that fund the delivery of your services.

If you do not have a website, send the complainant a fact sheet with this information following receipt of a complaint.