If you have a concern about an aged care provider, worker or responsible person, you can speak with the provider or with us. A ‘responsible person’ is a person who is responsible for or has significant influence over the services delivered by a provider.
You can raise your concern with us by giving feedback or making a complaint. Giving feedback is a way to tell us about your concern without being involved in the resolution process (how we handle it). If you want to be involved with how we handle your concern, it’s best to make a complaint.
Aged care providers need to make sure their services suit the needs of older people. They also need to make sure they meet their obligations in line with the Strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards, the Statement of Rights and the Aged Care Code of Conduct (Code). Aged care workers and responsible persons also need to comply with the Code.
Meeting these obligations makes sure that everyone receiving aged care is treated with dignity and respect. If you think an aged care provider, worker or responsible person isn’t meeting their obligations, it’s important to speak up.
What to do if you have a concern
Talk to the provider
Talking to the provider about your concern is often the easiest and quickest way to resolve things. It’s safe to speak up, and it can improve the quality of care for everyone. A provider, worker or responsible person can’t punish you or treat you differently for raising a concern.
If you don’t feel comfortable talking to the provider about your concern, or if speaking to the provider hasn’t helped, you can speak with us. Anyone can raise a concern with us about aged care, including:
- older people receiving aged care
- family, friends, carers and supporters of people who receive aged care
- aged care workers and volunteers
- health and medical professionals.
If you're raising a concern for someone else, let them know. They have a right to be involved.
Give feedback
Giving feedback is a way to tell us about your concern without being involved in how we handle it. We don’t expect you to take part in the resolution process. Instead, we look at the information you give us, assess and monitor the situation, and take action as needed.
If you want to raise your concern anonymously or don’t want to be involved in a complaint resolution process, giving feedback could be the easiest option. You can find more information in Give feedback.
Make a complaint
If you want to be involved with how we handle your concern, you can make a complaint.
Your choice – confidentiality options
You can raise your concern with us with or without sharing your name.
If you’re making a complaint, we can help you best if you share your name with us and the provider, worker or responsible person the complaint is about. This is called an open complaint. It means we can:
- involve you in the process
- give you regular updates
- check that the outcome meets your needs.
We’re always careful about how we receive, manage and use information you share with us.
We want everyone to feel safe to make a complaint or provide feedback in whatever way suits them. Let us know if you’re worried about the consequences of giving us information. We can talk with you about:
- your options for making a complaint or giving feedback
- how the Aged Care Act 2024 (Aged Care Act) protects you.
Open complaint
If you make an open complaint:
- we know your identity (name, personal information and contact details)
- the provider, worker or responsible person knows your identity
- we keep you informed about how your complaint’s going
- we can involve you in the resolution process
- you can give us more information
- you have reconsideration rights, which means you can ask us to reconsider a decision we make about your complaint.
Confidential complaint
If you make a confidential complaint:
- we know your identity
- we take reasonable steps not to disclose (reveal) your identity to the provider, worker or responsible person when we discuss your complaint with them. We do the same for anyone else you mention in your complaint, if you ask us to
- we keep you informed about how your complaint’s going
- we involve you in the resolution process as much as possible without revealing your identity
- you can give us more information
- you have reconsideration rights.
Anonymous complaint
If you make an anonymous complaint:
- we don't know your identity
- we take reasonable steps not to share information that could reveal your identity to the provider, worker or responsible person when we discuss your complaint with them. We do the same for anyone else you mention in your complaint, if you ask us to
- we can’t keep you informed about how your complaint’s going
- you can’t give us more information
- we might treat it as feedback if we can’t follow the complaints process because we can’t contact you
- we can’t tell you the outcome of your complaint or explain your reconsideration rights.
Tips for raising your concern
Write down your concerns
Writing down all your concerns can help you put the information together in a logical way. This makes it easier for us – or the provider, worker or responsible person – to understand what’s happened. It also gives you a written record of your concerns.
Focus on facts
Feeling upset, angry or frustrated about things that affect you or your loved one is understandable. If you’re an aged care worker or a health professional, you might feel concerned about the safety and wellbeing of older people.
However, to help us and the provider, worker or responsible person assess your concern, it’s best to stick to the facts when you describe what happened.
Include important information
Try to include as many details as you can, as soon as you can. For example, names, dates and locations. This helps us to address the concern more quickly.
Be clear about what you want
If you’re making a complaint, think about what you want to happen as a result. The outcome you want should be reasonable, achievable and in the best interests of the older person.
For example, you might want:
- an apology to the older person
- an explanation of what happened
- evidence of the provider using safer practices
- a plan from the provider to prevent the problem happening again.
Ask for help
Raising a concern can be confronting. Especially if you have a relationship with the provider or you’re an employee.
You can ask a friend, family member or supporter to help you raise your concern. You can find out more about your options for support on our Supporters webpage.
You can also have an advocate for support. An advocate can:
- help you make decisions that affect your quality of life
- explain your rights and responsibilities
- discuss the actions you can take
- support you when you raise a concern with us or a provider
- help you at any stage of the process.
The Older Persons Advocacy Network (OPAN) offers a free, confidential service. You can call them on 1800 700 600.
Your rights and protections
An important way we learn about things going wrong in aged care is when people share information with us.
If people don’t share their concerns, issues and wrongdoing may not be reported and may not get resolved.
When you share information, it helps us to:
- uphold the rights of older people receiving care
- protect and improve the safety, health, wellbeing and quality of life for older people
- encourage providers to be transparent (open and honest) and accountable
- identify and respond to risks to older people receiving care.
To help people to feel confident to speak up, there are whistleblower protections in the Aged Care Act. They protect people who share information with us when they think someone has broken the law.
When people share information that shows someone else (a provider or person) may not be meeting their obligations under aged care law, this is known as a qualifying disclosure.
Anyone who makes a qualifying disclosure can ask for whistleblower protections. This is why we treat all disclosures as if they do qualify for protection.
Anyone who shares information with us can choose to be anonymous or have their information stay confidential.
You can find more information at:
- Whistleblower disclosures - information for older people
- Whistleblower disclosures - information for providers
- Whistleblower disclosures - information for workers
- Managing Whistleblower Disclosures Policy
How we can help you
If you have a concern that you haven’t been able to resolve by talking with the provider, we can help you.
When you contact us, we listen to you and ask you questions so we understand your concern. If you’re making a complaint, we also ask you about the outcome you want and let you know if it’s possible.
What we can do
We can help you with concerns about an older person’s care, such as:
- a provider, worker or responsible person not meeting their obligations under the Aged Care Act
- a provider not acting in line with the Statement of Rights. For example, not respecting older people’s rights to:
- be treated with dignity and respect
- raise a concern
- receive care that is safe, high quality, meets their needs and helps them to live their best life
- personal care, such as services that help someone to shower, take medication, eat or move around
- communication, for example how a provider, worker or responsible person shares information with you and responds to your questions or concerns
- staff roles, for example how workers do their job and care for you
- your living environment, for example safety, security and cleaning
- some fees and charges.
We carefully and fairly assess the facts and evidence we have for each concern.
What we can’t do
We can’t:
- give advice on the availability of care or services in your local area
- give advice on who should make financial, legal or health decisions on behalf of an older person
- give legal advice or advice about what to include in your care agreement
- give clinical advice about what treatment you should receive
- if someone has died, determine the cause of death (this is the Coroner’s role).
Even when a concern relates to an issue we can look at, we might not be able to take action. For example, if the issue is part of legal proceedings or a coronial inquiry, or the older person doesn’t want us to examine it.
If we can’t help you, we can refer your concern to an organisation that might be able to help. For example, the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, professional registration boards or other complaints bodies.
More information
You can find out more from the following resources:
- Complaints Handling Policy
- Do you have concerns about an aged care provider, worker or responsible person? Brochure
- Top tips for making a complaint
- What to expect from us when you raise a complaint
- A little yarn goes a long way – a fact sheet for older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, their friends and family
- How we regulate aged care workers’ behaviour for your wellbeing and safety
- How we handle personal information from complaints
- Your voice in improving aged care – a fact sheet for aged care workers
- Aged care complaints FAQs
If you want to make a complaint about us, you can find information about how to do it on the Feedback about the Commission page on our website.
