Resolving contracting complaints — responsibilities of funded service providers

From time to time, we may be required to investigate a contracting complaint made to us about your organisation.

We investigate and manage complaints about service providers when the complainant alleges that the service provider:

• denied a client access to its services or provided insufficient service
• may not have a complaint management process
• may not have dealt with the complaint according to its complaint management process
• may not have addressed the substance of a complaint.

Note that we follow a similar but separate process for dealing with allegations of misconduct, even if the allegations are made in a complaint.

We're required to assess whether the matters raised:

• are an exception or one-off circumstance
• are indicative of underlying issues that we can assist with.

To make this determination, we will communicate with you, in writing:

• notifying you of the complaint
• asking for a response to the complaint and the issues it raises
• providing examples of what is required to be included in your response
• specifying a clear timeframe for the response.

This affords your organisation an opportunity to assure us that proper process was followed.

Note that if the timeframe is short it is because:

• under the contract, it is expected or required that you have the information readily available to provide to us on request. This includes copies of your complaint management policy and complaint register
• We aim to resolve the complaint within the 25-business-day timeframe.

Depending on your response, we may have to investigate the matter further, or may work with your organisation to reach an agreement on how to address the issues raised in the complaint. We work with services providers to resolve issues informally, or formally through a Service Development Plan or Performance Improvement Plan, depending on the severity of the issues.