How we help Contact us Contact us There are a number of ways you can contact us: online, telephone or post. We will respond as quickly as we can to any enquiries that we receive. Get in touch with us here Supportline - 0121 393 4849 Our SupportLine offers support, information and advice between 9.am and 4.30pm Monday to Friday. All calls are treated in the strictest confidence Complaints Focus Birmingham (Focus) is a responsive organisation guided by a set of values. We welcome complaints and will manage this fairly and effectively. While we always want to get it right the first time, complaints are a valuable part of quality improvement. Focus sets high standards and we want to know if we fall short of achieving them. Focus will: Welcome complaints as a valuable means of quality improvement and improving service delivery Acknowledge and address informal complaints and formal complaints Informal complaints will be managed at service level with the complainant being given the opportunity to formalise the complaint if required; if the complaint warrants an investigation, then it will be managed within the complaints process accordingly Deal with all complaints fairly and effectively, providing responses within agreed and set timescales Maintain confidentially (information will only be shared with those who need to know), investigate fairly and endeavour to provide satisfactory resolutions If a complaint is upheld, put preventative action in place to prevent or mitigate recurrence Promote the Complaints Policy and make this accessible to everyone we support Ensure that our staff understand the Policy and can help people to make a complaint Review all complaints to ensure we learn from them The principles of our complaints policy We encourage feedback from anybody connected to Focus; people who use our services, their family or advocates acting on their behalf, with their consent or in their best interests. Focus is committed to maintaining the highest quality and service standards across all our services and activities, which is underpinned by our values. Receiving complaints enables us to improve the quality of our services. Providing information in an accessible format is important to us. If you require the information in an alternative format, please let us know. We discourage complaints being made anonymously, because this makes it difficult to investigate and respond effectively. We are not able to deal with complaints made later than 12 months after the event unless the complaint relates to a Safeguarding concern. We will not deal with a complaint which is subject to legal proceedings or is deemed to be malicious. How to make a complaint Please contact the relevant Focus service, Manager or a member of staff as soon as possible. If having spoken to a member of staff you remain dissatisfied, please contact us: Write to us: Focus Birmingham, 48-62 Woodville Road, Harborne, B17 9AT By phone on – 0121 393 4849 By email: [email protected] To resolve your complaint, we will need some information: Your name and contact details; email address and telephone number What your complaint relates to When (the date the cause of the complaint occurred) Where the issue arose if applicable The names of those involved What is deemed to be a reasonable outcome or solution This will then trigger one of our leadership team to follow our Complaints, Comments and Compliments Policy and Procedure. The Local Government Ombudsman After Focus has fully investigated your complaint about concerns you have about someone receiving a Focus service, and you are not satisfied with the outcome, you can complain to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman. The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) provides free independent service. Following the conclusion of Focus’s complaints process you can contact the LGO Advice Team for information and advice, or to register your complaint in the following ways: England Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman Tel: 0300 061 0614 Email: [email protected] The LGSCO will not usually investigate a complaint until the organisation’s procedure has been exhausted. CQC Our Supported Living Services are regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) .The CQC and cannot get involved in individual complaints about providers, but is happy to receive information about our services at any time. If they receive a significant number of complaints, they can accelerate their next inspection of the specific service. In order to do this, you can contact them in the following ways: CQC (England) Care Quality Commission National Correspondence Citygate Gallowgate Newcastle -Upon-Tyne NE1 4PA Tel: 0300 061 6161 Post complaints monitoring and learning Responding to and learning from complaints is a core value of Focus. As such, we will consider whether there is any learning that arises from complaints, and use that learning to inform service delivery planning, quality assurance and performance improvement All complaints are centrally recorded, monitored and shared at directorate / organisational level, helping to improve practice across the organisation. Manage Cookie Preferences