As discussed in our previous School Governance article, an unmanaged complaint or internal grievance can escalate into a whistleblowing situation if the concern is not effectively managed.
The first step in managing external complaints and internal grievances is to differentiate between the two.
Your school’s complaints handling procedure is intended for use by non-staff such as parents and members of the wider school community whereas your internal grievance processes, which are generally established as part of your Human Resources Program, are designed for staff to raise internal personnel-related concerns including serious issues such as harassment, discrimination or bullying. Separating these processes can assist in effectively managing these issues, while also ensuring compliance in relation to your differing obligations to both internal stakeholders such as staff and external stakeholders such as parents.
Complaints can be categorised into two concepts: lower-risk complaints that are related to your school’s operations or approach and higher-risk complaints that could lead to whistleblowing if the complainant is not satisfied with the management or resolution of their complaint.
Examples of lower-risk complaints include:
Examples of higher-risk complaints include:
To ensure that your complaints handling procedure has the best chance of managing complaints and avoiding their escalation, reference should be made to the International Complaints Handling Standard ISO 10002:2014 and the Australian Complaints Handling Standard AS/NZS 10002:2014. Despite the fact that these standards have the same number they are in fact different standards. For an explanation of this oddity please refer to CompliSpace's article. There are also a number of other useful publications relevant to complaints handling that are mentioned in that article.
By way of example the Ombudsman New South Wales Complaint Management Framework promotes three levels of complaints handling. The key to implementing this framework is to ensure that there is a focus on resolving the majority of complaints at “Level 1” and rarely needing to escalate complaints to “Level 2”. A strong complaints handling program will support your school in resolving all Level 1 and 2 complaints effectively.
In CompliSpace’s briefing paper Complaints Handling in Non-Government Schools, we discussed some key concepts of complaints handling:
Within these frameworks, we also discussed the factors that contribute to a strong complaints handling procedure, ensuring that the majority of frontline complaints are resolved, and that escalations are managed appropriately. Underpinning these factors are some key points to note as set out below.
Your complaints handling procedure will only be effective if it is accessible to your target audience, along with being easy to follow and understand. If your school is within a multilingual environment, we recommend ensuring that your policy is also available in any relevant languages as well.
To support ease of use and accessibility, the Victorian Equal Opportunity & Human Rights Commission also recommends that complaint handling procedures include the following:
Including a clearly communicated appeal process within your policy can help encourage all parties to work towards a successful resolution of a complaint. Supporting this, the Commonwealth Ombudsman encourages a follow-up procedure where complainants are given the opportunity to request a review. Their recommended review process includes:
Quality Area 7 of the National Quality Standard (NQS) recommends that complaints be used to reflect on opportunities for improvement of internal practices, programs and team performance. Effective utilisation of the National Quality Framework also promotes improvement of your complaints handling process through:
The Commonwealth Ombudsman also promotes continuing training and learning for complaints officers. Effective training includes a comprehensive program that incorporates initial training and ongoing development, including:
To ensure that your school is prepared for the upcoming whistleblower changes, we recommend that your school implements a strong complaints handling procedure, as well as a robust internal grievance procedure, as part of your first line of defence. These procedures needs to be relevant and accessible to relevant stakeholders. Continual improvement, including training and feedback for complaints officers, will further support your procedures and processes to remaining effective.
Click here for Part Two of this series.