Making a complaint is not ‘being difficult.' Most aged care providers do their best to provide quality care and services for older Australians. However, issues can occur so we need to ensure that people can raise their concerns in a constructive and safe way.
If you have a concern about the care you or someone else is receiving, it is important that you talk about it.
Complaints are important because they can help service providers improve the quality of care and services they provide to you or your loved one. Your complaint can help other people too.
If you feel comfortable, we encourage you to raise your concern with the staff or managers of the service first as this is often the best way to have your concern resolved. All service providers are required to have a complaints system in place. In most cases, you will be able to resolve your concern with them.
If this doesn’t work or you don’t feel comfortable, we can support you to resolve your concern with the service provider. We provide a free service for anyone to raise a concern or make a complaint about the quality of care or services provided to people receiving Australian Government funded aged care. This may be aged care services people are receiving for help in their home or in an aged care home, including:
- Residential aged care services, including permanent care and respite care
- Home Care Packages delivered on a Consumer Directed Care basis
- Flexible care where a person is receiving 'residential care' or 'home care'; this includes services provided through transition care, innovative care or multi-purpose services (MPS)
- Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP), and
- National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Flexible Aged Care Programme.
Learn more about how you can Lodge a complaint by phone, in writing or online below.
How to make an effective complaint
If you have a concern, a few things help to make your complaint more effective and easier to resolve. We have put together some tips for how to make an effective complaint.
The complaints process
The complaints process page provides an overview of what happens when a complaint is lodged with us.
Services available to help you to make a complaint
Sometimes making a complaint on your own can be difficult. There are several options for support to make a complaint. If you raise a concern on behalf of someone else it is important that the person (or his or her representative) knows about it.
Referrals to other organisations we work with
If you lodge a complaint with us and we can't help you, we will try to identify someone who can assist you. We may need to refer some issues to other organisations to ensure that your concerns are handled correctly, by the people best placed to deal with them.