General Feedback

We welcome and encourage feedback from everyone who uses our services or who generously supports us. We are committed to ensuring that our services and our staff offer the best possible quality experience to our clients, donors, supporters and communities. If you would like to give us feedback on your experience with Petals, please email: contact@petalscharity.org.

Petals Counselling Serive Complaints Procedure

Petals aims to ensure that each client is treated with dignity and respect.  We are committed to providing a professional, quality service and will take any complaint or grievance seriously. As a client-centred service, we see you as active participants in your care.  We hope you never have cause to complain about our Counselling Service but, if you do, the following procedure ensures we have a clear, equitable and speedy procedure for investigating and responding to complaints:

1. Preliminary Enquiries

1.1  If you are considering whether to make a complaint, you are very welcome to make preliminary enquiries or have informal discussions by telephone or by appointment with Petals Director of Counselling, Karen Burgess (karen@petalscharity.org), or one of her colleagues.  You may simply want to provide feedback on the care you received and this is always welcome in helping us to improve our services.

2. Making a Formal Complaint

2.1 Alternatively, you may wish to make a formal complaint about our Counselling Service. Details of the complaint must be addressed in writing (email is acceptable) to the Director of Counselling and marked confidential. It must state the
nature of your complaint, give relevant details of dates and name the member(s) of staff concerned.  Where the complaint is about the Director of Counselling, the complaint should be sent directly to the Chair of Trustees, Dr Alison Scadden (dee@petalscharity.org) in the first instance

2.2 A complaint should be made as near as possible to the events concerned, usually within a month, and in exceptional circumstances no later than within 6 months of the incident to which it refers. The person complained against will be notified of the
complaint.

2.3 In making the complaint, it is helpful for you to give some indication of the outcome you hope for from the complaint.

2.4 On receipt of the complaint, the Director of Counselling will carefully consider and fully investigate your complaint and make a judgement on the complaint with recommendations according to the steps detailed below.

3. Investigating and adjudicating a complaint using the Complaints Procedure of
Petals Counselling Service.

If the Director of Counselling in their preliminary considerations and consultations finds that the complaint is to be informally or formally handled by Petals’ own investigatory and adjudicatory procedure, this will proceed as follows:

3.1 The Director of Counselling will arrange to speak with you, where necessary, to clarify the circumstances surrounding your complaint.  You may be accompanied by another person of your choosing at this meeting/discussion if you so wish.

3.2 The person or persons complained about will then be invited to a meeting with the Director of Counselling. The purpose of this meeting is to provide an opportunity for them to respond to the complaint. Where it is a general complaint about the Counselling Service, the Director of Counselling will also consult with any other parties as appropriate and with respect to confidentiality and fairness.

3.3 In consultation with a senior colleague, the Director of Counselling will make a written report of their investigation. We aim to respond to your complaint within 15 working days in order to resolve this as speedily as possible whilst ensuring we have all facts available. This report will summarise the background to the complaint and the outcome of the investigations. It will identify steps to be taken in response to the complaint which may be the following:

3.3.1 Recommending and/or carrying out changes in policy and practice in the PetalsCounselling Service.

3.3.2 Recommending and/or requiring further training or supervision for the person complained about.

3.3.3 In cases where a serious breach of professional conduct has been found, the Director of Counselling, in addition to any of the above actions, will refer the matter to the professional body to which the counsellor belongs, in most cases this will be BACP.

3.3.4 In the event of the complaint being in part or entirely unfounded, the report will give a clear account of the grounds for not supporting or not being able to resolve or clarify the complaint.

3.4 If you are dissatisfied with the way in which your complaint has been dealt with, you may appeal in writing to the Chair of Trustees for Petals.

4. Contact Details:

Director of Counselling – Karen Burgess
Email: karen@petalscharity.org Tel: 0300 6880068

Chair of Trustees – Dr Alison Scadden
Email: dee@petalscharity.org Tel: 0300 6880068

Address:
Unit 5B Downing Park,
Station Road,
Swaffham Bulbeck,
Cambs,
CB25 0NW