What is your Complaints Procedure? | Autism Assessment UK

Complaints Policy and Procedure

What is a complaint?

A complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction, whether justified or not. The complaint can be around the standard of service you receive from us, the behaviour of an associate delivering that service or the action, or lack of, taken by an associate of the team.

Our complaints standards

We can receive complaints either over the telephone or via email.
You may wish for someone else to raise the complaint on your behalf, which if this is the case we will need to obtain your consent in the first instance.
We take all complaints seriously and you can expect to be treated honestly, fairly and with respect at all times. In return we ask that you treat our team with the same respect whilst dealing with your complaint.
Any information you provide will only be shared with the relevant team member, in line with our Data Protection Policy.
All complaints should be received to us no more than 6 months after the date of clinical work for which the complaint is subject to.
We will send an acknowledgement of your complaint within 3 working days of receipt and where possible offer an outcome.
Where it is not possible to offer a response within 3 working days, due to further investigations needed to be carried out, we will tell you why and what steps need to be taken next. We will keep you informed of our progress.

What is your complaints process?

We are committed to resolving complaints and putting things right for our clients. If you feel you have cause to complain then we would please ask that you please contact us via telephone or email to: admin@autismassessmentuk.com and mark it for the attention of the Data Quality Coordinator.

We have a two stage complaints procedure.

Stage 1(Informal Stage)

Upon receipt of your complaint you will receive an acknowledgement within 3 working days advising you if we have been able to resolve the complaint. This will be in the format of a Summary Resolution Communication.

Stage 2 (Formal Response)

If you are unhappy with the outcome of your complaint at Stage 1 then you may request a further review in writing and more to Stage 2.

If we are unable to resolve your complaint immediately and require further time to investigate your concerns we will write to advise you this is the case and keep you updated at regular intervals on the progress of your complaint. Once we have resolved your complaint to the best of our ability we will send you a Final Response. The response will contain details of our investigation, our decision and if applicable the next steps.

If you are still dissatisfied

If you are dissatisfied with our response to Stage 1 and Stage 2 then you can ask for your complaint to be reviewed by ISCAS – the Independent Healthcare Sector Complaints Adjudication Service (ISCAS) which Autism Assessment UK subscribes to. If you are unhappy with our decision and wish to take the complaint further then we will refer your complaint to them for independent resolution. If you decide to refer your complaint after we’ve issued our Final Response, then you must do so within 6 months of the date on the Final Response correspondence.

Will my complaint be kept confidential?

Your complaint will only be shared with relevant clinicians, to enable us to conduct a thorough investigation and respond accordingly. We will also share our investigation and our responses with Iscas, if you should choose to refer your complaint to them.

At Autism Assessment UK we are committed to providing an outstanding service to our clients and as part of that we review any feedback to learn from and develop new approaches to enhance the client experience with us. As part of this we may use your feedback as an example to the team but this will NOT include personal details about you.

Should you have any further questions around our complaints procedure then please email: admin@autismassessmentuk.com