Complaints Self-Assessment Tool

The Tool can be used by any staff member at a Victorian public mental health and wellbeing service to self-assess their complaints handling processes, policies and culture. The Tool is designed for practical use across all settings - inpatient units, community clinics, Prevention and Recovery Care services (PARCs), Community Care Units (CCUs), supported residential services - and by all staff involved with complaints. We strongly recommend diverse staff engagement with the Tool, and an emphasis on lived experience input.

Our ‘Which parts are relevant to you’ table below demonstrates which stages of the Tool are relevant to different roles, teams and committees. This Table is also explained in this video.

Click on the link below to download a full-sized image.

The Tool is an online platform accessible in any web browser, not an app, and is designed for computers, tablets and smartphones.

You can assess each stage in the complaints process, as well as the principles that underpin them.

Each stage contains a series of statements and questions, answered with ‘No’, ‘Partially’ or ‘Yes’. All your answers are numerically scored, then weighted and mapped against the relevant principles. Total scores are then expressed as a percentage for each stage, as well as for each statement and principle. You can see full details of the assessment process and the principles here.

The Tool can give you a tailored Mini Report after each section and/or a Final Report when you’ve finished whichever stages you’ve chosen to do. All Reports feature Engagement Material, informed by extensive lived experience input, exploring Discussion Points, Barriers, Constraints and Advice for all stages.

Example materials are also featured throughout the Tool. These include a diverse range of good practice examples and practices from ‘Ways to Complain’ to ‘Learning from Complaints’. We encourage you to share your own good practice examples in the Tool.

Any part of the Tool can be saved as a PDF, so you can extract useful content to use outside the Tool.

Go to the video for more on how the Tool works.

The Tool offers many opportunities for collaboration and engagement between services, among different workforces, and with the Commission.

It can be used by individual staff, teams or sector-wide. Services have reported real advantages and benefits to working with the Tool in groups, sharing practices and insights across settings and disciplines, and including important lived experience perspectives.

It can be completed in full, or you can focus on specific areas that directly relate to your work. Find out more about ‘Which parts are relevant to you’ below.

As the Tool’s questions, Engagement Material and Good Practice Examples can all be downloaded, these resources can be used in different ways when and as needed by services. For example, the Tool’s engagement material (Discussion Points, Barriers, Constraints and Advice) is being used to drive and inform service improvement conversations, training, projects and outcomes. We believe such positive complaint culture developments are as crucial as improvements to complaint documentation, processes and policies

The Tool can be completed without including any information that identifies the person/people completing the Tool, or their workplace.

There are optional fields that can collect service type (adult, aged, or child/adolescent), location (metropolitan or rural) and setting (inpatient, residential or community); and the person’s name and contact details if they wish to be contacted.

The Tool can be used anonymously, or you can voluntarily choose to provide information about your organisation and role. The Tool is not an audit, but will provide general insights to the Commission about opportunities for further education, support and training within the sector.

If you choose to provide your contact details, we may contact you to discuss any support, training or further information you may be interested in.

Whether or not you complete the Tool anonymously, you can contact us directly to discuss the results of the self-assessment or to seek further support to improve the complaints process at your service.

• The Tool is not an audit of services nor a survey of complaint processes/practices, it’s an opportunity for services to review, test and improve their complaints handling process. The Tool has been created to promote better practice and support services to identify areas for improvement.

A positive complaints culture recognises the valuable role complaints play in helping shape a better mental health and wellbeing system for the future. A high number of complaints within a service may be an indicator of a positive culture where consumers and carers are encouraged to speak up, and their complaints lead to service improvements. Complaints help to drive improvements to public mental health and wellbeing services that are informed by lived experience.

The Tool was developed to support services identify gaps, strengths and opportunities in their local complaints processes. The Tool also aims to support services to strengthen all aspects and stages of their complaints processes, empower dialogue across disciplines (centering lived experience), drive service improvement outcomes, and develop a positive complaints culture.

The detailed reports and analysis provided by the Tool also enable services to implement improvements, then reassess their complaints processes, compare scores, and map their progress over time.

The Mental Health Complaints Commissioner (MHCC) used its Driven by Lived Experience Framework and Strategy to develop the Tool, which was co-designed with lived experience representatives and in close consultation with stakeholders across Victoria’s public mental health services.

At the Commission, we continue to use the Tool and will seek feedback from staff and services who use the Tool, which will help inform all future updates to the Tool.

If you have any other questions about the Complaints Self-Assessment Tool, you’re welcome to contact us by email on info@mhwc.vic.gov.au or call us on 1800 246 054.