How to Share Your Feedback: Complaints and Compliments Guide

This guide is designed to make it easy for you to understand how to give feedback, what happens when you do, and what to expect throughout the process.
If you need help at any point, don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re here to listen.

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Introduction

At Optalis, we believe in treating everyone with respect, being open and honest, and always striving to improve our services. If you have a compliment, concern, or complaint about the services we provide, we want to hear from you. Your feedback helps us improve and ensures we continue to meet your needs.

We aim to provide a high standard of care in all our services, and your views help us maintain the quality you would expect from us. If a complaint alerts us to possible abuse or neglect, we will inform the other relevant authorities, who will decide how to investigate and monitor outcomes.

Our Customer Care Commitment, means we:

  • Want to make it easy for you to make your views known to us.
  • Will treat you fairly and respond to you quickly.
  • Will always do our best to help you get the result you want.

Compliment: If you’re happy with our services or our staff, feel free to share your positive feedback.

Concern: If something is bothering you but can be fixed quickly (within a day or so), we’ll treat it as a concern and work to resolve it right away.

Complaint: If you’re not satisfied with something and it requires more formal attention, this is treated as a complaint, and we will investigate it thoroughly.

The quickest and most effective way to provide feedback is directly with the service.

Additionally, you can provide feedback through: 

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to share your thoughts with us, and we encourage you to do so whenever you feel the need.

We aim to handle complaints quickly, fairly, and in an open and honest way. We take all complaints seriously and use the information from investigations to help us improve our service. We treat all complaints confidentially but may need to speak to those involved as part of our investigation.

Anyone affected by the way Optalis provides services can make a complaint. This includes:

  • The person receiving services.
  • A representative, if the person is unable to complain or needs support to do so. This could be a family member or an advocate.

  • Confidentiality: Your information will be kept private. If you are raising a complaint on behalf of someone else, we need their consent to share their information.
  • Safeguarding: If your complaint is about someone’s safety or well-being, we will follow safeguarding procedures.
  • Equality: We treat all complaints fairly and ensure that everyone has the same opportunity to share their concerns, no matter their background or ability.

Acknowledging Your Feedback:

  • If you’ve shared a compliment, we might not respond unless you ask us to.
  • If it’s a concern, we’ll aim to resolve it by the next working day. If we can’t, we’ll treat it as a complaint and acknowledge it formally.
  • If it’s a complaint, we’ll acknowledge it within three working days and let you know who’s investigating it, how long it will take, and how to contact us.

Investigating Your Complaint:

  • Your complaint will be investigated by someone with the right experience and who hasn’t been involved with the issue before.
  • Most complaints will be investigated within 20 working days, but if it’s a more complex matter, it may take up to 3 months.
  • We’ll keep you updated during the investigation and let you know if anything is delayed.

The Outcome:

  • Once the investigation is finished, we’ll send you a letter explaining what we found and what we’re doing about it.

If you’re unhappy with how we’ve handled the complaint, you can take it to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman for further investigation.
Local Government Ombudsman,
PO Box 4771,
Coventry, CV40EH
www.lgo.org.uk

If your complaint is about a regulated service (e.g. a residential care home or reablement service) you can also contact the Care Quality Commission. We can advise you about how to do this.

A complaint needs to be raised within 12 months of the event happening. If it has been longer, we will consider your reason and may still investigate it.

We do not investigate the following complaints:

  • Complaints that do not relate to Optalis and its service
  • Complaints by employees relating to their employment (handled via our grievance procedure).
  • Complaints that have already been investigated and a response given.

In these cases, we will inform you in writing and explain why we are not investigating.

While we respect your right to complain, we expect all interactions to be respectful. Threatening or abusive behaviour will not be tolerated.

We will handle anonymous complaints under this procedure, but we encourage you to provide contact details to allow us to update you on the outcome.

If you need assistance understanding the complaints procedure or need advice on where to get help, we will support you.
If you would like to receive a copy of the Policy in full, please get in touch. We can also provide this guide in other formats on request.