Outcome
The provider must encourage and support aged care workers to make complaints and give feedback about the provider’s delivery of funded aged care services without reprisal.
The provider must acknowledge and transparently manage all complaints and feedback and use complaints and feedback to contribute to the continuous improvement of funded aged care services.
Actions
The provider implements a complaints and feedback management system to receive, record, respond to and report on complaints and feedback.
The provider encourages and supports aged care workers to make complaints and give feedback including supporting access to advocates and services to support raising and resolving complaints and feedback.
The provider takes timely action to resolve complaints and uses an open disclosure process when things go wrong.
The provider collects and analyses complaints and feedback data. Outcomes are reported to the governing body and aged care workers and inform the provider’s quality system to improve the quality of funded aged care services.
The provider regularly reviews and improves the effectiveness of how complaints and feedback from aged care workers on delivery of funded aged care services are managed through the complaints and feedback management system.
Why is this outcome important?
Outcome 2.6a explains providers’ obligations to acknowledge, manage and respond to feedback and complaints. A strong feedback and complaints management system is important for addressing issues that come up in the delivery of aged care services in a timely way. By encouraging older people, workers and others to share their feedback and make complaints without fear of reprisal, you can support an environment of confidence and trust within your workforce and organisation.
Outcome 2.6a highlights that acknowledging and transparently managing feedback and complaints from workers can support continuous improvement in the delivery of aged care services. By thoroughly recording, investigating, and learning from feedback and complaints, you can mitigate the risk of issues happening again and improve how effective your feedback and complaints management system is. This can also help you to identify and address areas to improve the quality of aged care services. In addition to feedback for improvement, it’s also important to encourage and acknowledge positive feedback from workers. Positive feedback highlights areas where providers are doing well and should continue these practices to support the delivery of high quality aged care services.
Regularly collecting and analysing feedback and complaints data from workers helps you to identify organisation-wide issues and make sure you quickly address any patterns or trends. This informs how you manage feedback, complaints and your overall quality system to improve the quality of aged care services. This also supports a positive culture of quality care and services and continuous improvement.
You need to give focus to:
- reporting outcomes from feedback and complaints to workers and the governing body
- monitoring and evaluating the complaints resolution process to see if it’s working.
Providers delivering aged care services in a residential care home, home or community setting are expected to put in place systems and processes for managing and responding to feedback and complaints from workers about the delivery of aged care services. Providers delivering aged care services in a residential care home, home or community setting should also have processes in place to report and escalate feedback and complaints that are given to their associated providers.
Key tasks
Providers
Providers
Put in place a feedback and complaints management system that encourages and supports workers to make complaints and give feedback.
Make sure your feedback and complaints management system outlines:
- clear and documented processes, roles and responsibilities on how feedback and complaints from workers are:
- received
- registered and acknowledged
- recorded
- investigated
- responded to
- managed
- resolved
- reported on
- learnt from to improve aged care services.
- how you will encourage and support workers to provide feedback and make complaints. This includes providing access to advocates and external services to support raising and resolving complaints and feedback. This also includes offering different ways workers can share this information with you.
- how you keep feedback and complaints confidential, if this is what the worker wants. This needs to be in line with your information management system (Outcome 2.7). Make sure:
- workers do not face retribution because they give feedback or raise a complaint
- you make efforts to reduce administrative burden
- you resolve all feedback and complaints
- you identify any patterns or trends.
- how you can escalate feedback and complaints in a timely way
- how you can access information about external complaints and feedback mechanisms
- processes to collect, store, use and disclose any information related to feedback and complaints from workers, with their informed consent. This needs to be in line with your information management system (Outcome 2.7).
- how you can provide positive feedback to encourage and strengthen good practices you observe
- what feedback or complaints need to be recorded. Make sure the system describes any situations where you don’t need to record feedback or complaints. For example, if the worker chooses not to have the feedback recorded.
- any feedback or complaints that you need to respond to. Include:
- who you should involve in this process
- timeframes
- situations where you need an investigation, such as after an incident or near miss (Outcome 2.5).
- how you discuss and resolve complaints. You should do this in consultation with the worker who made the complaint. how you analyse and resolve complaints and feedback. Focus on identifying any trends or organisation-wide issues during performance monitoring. For example, aspects of care which aren’t delivered well may suggest that your organisation needs additional worker training (Outcome 2.3).
The feedback and complaints management system should also provide guidance and information on how to practise open disclosure (Outcome 2.3) when things go wrong.
Use your feedback and complaints management system to acknowledge, manage and respond to feedback and complaints from workers.
Have mechanisms to give feedback and make complaints that work well for workers. This means that these mechanisms are accessible, prompt and fair for workers. These can include:
- formal complaint and feedback channels
- the complaints escalation process
- anonymous surveys or questionnaires
- feedback forms
- worker forums or feedback panels
- regular individual and/or team meetings
- union representation.
Consider the different ways workers would like to give feedback and make complaints. This can include sharing information verbally, in writing, digitally, openly, confidentially and anonymously. Make sure these options are available within your mechanisms for giving feedback and making complaints.
Also, consider the needs and preferences of workers. Facilitate access to supports such as advocates and services to support raising and resolving complaints and feedback during this process, if they want it.
If you find issues or ways you can improve through this process, you need to address them. If things go wrong, you need to:
- practise open disclosure (Outcome 2.3). This means being open about what has gone wrong. Share what went wrong with workers.
- put in place strategies to mitigate the risk of things going wrong again.
Collect and look for trends in your complaints and feedback data from workers to find organisation-wide issues and ways for the service to improve. Do this as part of your broader performance monitoring activities (Outcome 2.3). Report these outcomes to the governing body and workers.
Have a feedback register to monitor feedback and complaints from workers
Monitor how well you use the feedback and complaints management system to manage feedback and complaints from workers.
Regularly review your feedback and complaints management system to make sure it works well for workers. Look for ways to improve the system.
To check if you’re managing feedback and complaints well, you can review:
- complaints and feedback
- incident information (Outcome 2.5)
- feedback meeting minutes and records.
You will know things are going well if workers say that they are confident that:
- their complaints had been closed out appropriately in a timely manner
- they feel heard.
The guidance for Outcome 2.3 has more information on monitoring the quality system.
Further resources about this outcome can be found on the Commission's Quality Standards Resource Centre.
