Complaint

Compliments, Suggestions, Concerns and Complaints

Mediation for Families™ welcomes feedback in the form of compliments, suggestions, concerns and complaints.

We believe that each of these forms of feedback enables us to improve and extend the services we offer and how we offer them. We appreciate that all feedback is a motivation for improvement by our practitioners and support staff.

Feedback considered seriously and integrated into practice generally results in the delivery of higher-quality, professional family dispute resolution, education and advice.

Feedback

In response to feedback we will always endeavour to:

• to listen
• to respectfully ask questions
• to politely respond
• to respond in keeping with our estimated response time
• to keep appropriate records where required

Complaints

In response to complaints we will endeavour to:

• to address each complaint in a balanced approach
• to follow the principles of natural justice
• to maintain confidentiality, within the required scope regarding parties identities and the substance of complaint.
• to learn from and set improvement mechanisms

Should you have a compliment, suggestion, concern and or complaint, Mediation for Families™ would like
to hear from you.

We address matters raised within three (3) months of your experience.

Please provide your compliments, suggestions, concerns or complaints in writing by email or letter by a method listed on this website.

If you bring a complaint to us verbally, we will ask for more information in writing.

We will respond to you within the advised time frame below which may be a mere approximation only dependant on the complexity of the complaint.

Compliments, Suggestions and Concerns

When you give us a compliment, we will:

• forward it to the those directly or indirectly involved
• consider how to continue this nature of service delivery
•  consider how to provide improved areas of service delivery based on your compliment

When you give us a suggestion, we will:

• pass it to the relevant people within the organisation
• consider the benefits of your suggestion
• analyse the feasibility of integrating your suggestion

When you tell us about a concern, we will:

• Determine whether in fact your concern should be dealt under our complaints procedure
• Otherwise, we will determine whether you wish your concern to be passed on to the relevant person and consider how to address your concern.

Complaints

Our process

Should you be dissatisfied about a Mediation for Families™ practitioner, panel mediator or staff member this is the process that must be followed.

In the first instance should you be dissatisfied with any aspect our service, you should bring your concern to the attention of the person that has carriage of your matter in order to discuss and resolve the matter in a prompt and amicable fashion.

After discussing your concern with the person, should you continue to be dissatisfied with the resolution or outcome, upon receiving your complaint in writing, we will request the details and pass the complaint to the relevant person(s) in the organisation.  After referring to any relevant emails or other documents, we will provide a response which could include an explanation, an apology and/or an action to improve the situation or fix it.

Our complaints process follows the foundations of natural justice and to meet this requirement the respondent must have the opportunity, in the first instance, to respond to a complaint directly to the person making the complaint. Once this has occurred and if the response does not resolve the complaint then it can be dealt with via our internal complaint process.

Our complaints process is confidential meaning anything discussed or agreed to throughout the process remains confidential and cannot be used in any other forum, disseminated to
other people or placed on any form of social media. When you engage our services you unequivocally agree to the confidentiality of the process.

If your complaint is about a mediator or family dispute resolution practitioner , it is important to note anything that has taken place during a mediation cannot and will not be discussed or reviewed as mediation is a confidential process which you agree to when you engage our services and prior to undertaking any intake program and or mediation conference.

Our organisation will need to know the outcome or resolution you are seeking and you will be asked this.

Once information from yourself and the Dispute Resolution Practitioner are provided the matter is then given to the relevant person in the organisation who will examine all the information and provide a response and outcome inline with the estimated time frame.

Outcomes

The outcome of your complaint can vary and may include:

• No further action
• A notification to the Family Dispute Resolution Practitioner only
• Information for the referral of your complaint if a different forum is more suitable
• An apology from the Dispute Resolution Practitioner
• Additional training for the mediator
• Removal of the mediator from our panel of mediators

We will maintain regular contact with you and with the Dispute Resolution Practitioner to keep you each informed of progress, to provide any reasonable assistance and, as far as possible, to make sure that you are satisfied with the steps that Mediation for Families™ has taken.

We will apply a reasonably transparent procedure so all complaints are addressed in a fair, consistent and timely manner.

Timing

Our complaints process aims to deal with complaints as efficiently as possible.  On average this can take between eight and twelve weeks.

Next Step

After undertaking our internal complaint process should you remain dissatisfied with the outcome please contact us to obtain our external complaint handling facilitators details.

Questions

Mediation for Families™ firmly believes that a good client and business relationship is based upon mutual understanding. Questions about our complaint policy should be directed to PO Box 39 Camp Hill Q 4152