Complaints Self-Assessment Tool

Hi there and welcome to today's training session on the MHCC's Complaints Self-Assessment Tool.

This short video is intended to help you understand how you can use the Complaints

Self-Assessment Tool, what you can use it for and what you can get out of it.

Firstly, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we're working today,

which for us is the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation.

I'd like to acknowledge their Elders past, present and emerging,

as well as recognize that sovereignty was never ceded.

I'd also like to recognize the strength of people with living and lived experience of

mental illness, psychological distress, alcohol and other drugs, as well as

their families, carers and supporters. I also want to call out that it takes a

lot of strength to talk about your lived experience, whether that be with family,

friends, your community or through a complaint at a public mental health service or with the MHCC.

My name is Jake McLaughlin, I'm the Manager of Strategy and Communications at the MHCC, and I'm

joined by Kirsty who is our Senior Education and Training Officer. Many of you might know Kirsty,

she has worked in the public mental health system for quite a while in quality roles,

both at the MHCC and within the public mental health services themselves.

So, in terms of who is the Mental Health Complaints Commissioner, the MHCC is a Victorian

independent specialist body set up to safeguard people's rights, as well as resolve complaints and

recommend service and system improvements across the public mental health system.

We're driven by lived experience in everything we do.

It's a really important part of our work and we aim to drive continuous improvement

in the public mental health system. The Complaints Self-Assessment Tool is

an example of being driven by lived experience because it wouldn't have been possible without

our lived experience co-designers and the input from people with lived experience.

It is truly a product that is built on lived experience.

What is the purpose of the Complaints Self-Assessment Tool?

It's for services to identify gaps and strengths in their complaints process and culture,

and access resources to particularly target any identified areas for improvement.

That includes examples from other Victorian public mental health

services of how they've approached different parts of their complaints

process and learning from complaints. The Tool also has a scoring system which

allows services to track how they're going over time and compare scores.

The Tool is anonymous and it can be used by any

staff in services involved in complaints processes, including lived experience.

How does the Tool work?

There are eight stages that are covered by the Tool, from making a complaint through

to learning from complaints and reporting on complaints through to procedure review.

There are five principles that underpin the Tool and the scoring system in the

report provides a score by stage and also by principle.

In terms of the sequence of completing the Tool, first you answer some questions and then you can

access some example material that has been provided by Victorian public mental health

services, and then you can run the report. The reports can be run either at the stage

level if you only complete one stage or you can run a full report at the end.

I'm going to click on this link to the tool and show you live on the website.

There's a bit of an introduction there. Click the link to access the Tool.

Again, there's a summary there so if you're completing it with other staff, that's a handy

way to provide a brief introduction. I clicked 'Next'.

I mentioned it's anonymous. We are hoping to collect general demographics around the

type of services completing it, but you can also select 'Other'.

I'll just say 'Adult', 'Metro' and 'Other'. I'll put in 'Whole service'.

Optional, if you'd like to put in your name. We'd love it if you did, because we'd like

to make contact around how you've found the Tool and how we can help develop it,

but it's completely optional. Then 'Next'.

This is the start of the Tool. We're in stage one here and you

can see down here this little menu is where you would navigate between

the stages if you wanted to go straight to another stage and skip section one,

depending on what's relevant for you. I'll show you there's a slide later

that helps have a look at what parts might be relevant to your position or your interests.

So within each stage there are statements - the 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4, and then within

those statements are some questions, and it's the questions that are scored.

So really it's just a matter of going through these questions and,

ideally with a group, but we can talk more later about how you might go about it in your service,

and just popping in do we partially meet that or fully meet that.

For example, 'Strategies are in place for all consumers and carers to ease the

fear of making a complaint' 'Yes', 'No' or 'Partially'.

'Strategies are in place for consumers and carers in the resolution process to ease fears during

the complaint process' Might say 'Yes'.

'Confidentiality is assured'.

'Strategies are in place to address cultural and

demographic specific barriers to feeling comfortable or inclined to speak up'

'Strategies are in place to ease staff fear of the complaint process',

and 'As much as possible,

anonymous complaints are addressed with the same diligence as other complaints'.

I'll just whiz through the rest to show you the next stage.

So if I hit 'Next' here, it brings up the report which I can also download as a PDF.

It provides the results at the statement level so you can see there were six questions in statement

one and we got five points out of a possible six. For every 'Yes' response it's one point and

a 'Partial' response is half a point, so that's how that point system works.

You can expand here to look at how you scored. There's an algorithm set up to also score the

questions based on which principles they cover. Maybe you may not have strengths in a particular

stage of your complaint process, but you might really have great strengths in collaborative

or lived experience involvement across the whole process, and this is a way of demonstrating that.

At the end of the report there are resources that you can expand here around 'Discussion points',

'Constraints', 'Potential barriers' and 'Advice' that we've collected as

part of the consultation process. They also appear on the report.

Very importantly here, the example material for this section is a PDF

that you can download where we've collected examples from across

Victorian public mental health services of how they're doing particular things well.

Up here I can access a PDF explaining the scoring

system if you need, but also access to the definitions of the principles,

which can be helpful in interpreting where your particular strengths and weaknesses are.

This is where you click 'Save as PDF' to download it as a PDF and save.

That allows you to compare your results over time.

This slide goes through very briefly what's covered in each part of the Tool.

Making a complaint: we saw those questions in the demonstration, particularly addressing concerns

versus complaints, fears and barriers. Ways to complain: having a range of

options of how people might complain, ensuring the process is accessible.

How we handle complaints: checking the various methods, boxes or email inboxes to where the

complaints are being received, how we record and escalate promptly.

Responding to complaints: being very clear around who responds, when and how, and who can close,

and reflection on that response process to ensure we're learning from it.

Learning from complaints: looking at themes that are coming up in complaints over time and

reporting that to consumers and carers and staff, and identifying improvements out of that.

Improving the experience: actually making improvements based on some

common complaint themes. Seeking feedback from people

that have made complaints, to look at how we can improve that process.

and a periodic review of the complaint procedure

to ensure that all of these things are covered and there are clear lines

of accountability in the procedure and it's a continuous improvement process.

This slide outlines the stages of the Tool and which stages might be more

or less relevant to different staff in services,

based on their role or interests. The bold ticks are those sections

that are very relevant to a particular staff member or role and the grey are less relevant.

We know services are under a lot of time pressure so this just helps

pinpoint where the most value is going to be for particular staff or also particular committees.

This includes the number of questions per section,

also to give an idea of time required if you're arranging a meeting to do the Tool in a group.

There are different ways the Tool can be used. It was designed to be completed as a group in

a service with those involved in complaints and including lived experience in the room.

However, it can be done, there's still benefit to completing it individually or as a team.

As I've mentioned, it can be completed all at once or just the relevant stage.

Also you don't need to complete the questions at all, you could go in and download the questions

or just grab the example material or some of the training and engagement material.

This is some feedback from services. This particular service they'd completed

the Tool individually and found the benefits individually to informing their practice.

This one particularly informed how they went about

responding to a difficult complaint that helped get a positive outcome.

This service did complete the Tool as a group and found that the benefit was

programs being able to learn from each other. Also, they had lived experience in the room which

they found very valuable in identifying room for improvement and respectfully challenging some of

the views around what the service thought they were doing well or the areas for improvement.

There was some nice feedback from a lived experienced staff member that they could

sense immediately that the Tool was coming from a lived experience from the ground up.

In terms of next steps, we would really love for you to give the Tool a go.

Jump online and visit our website and use the tool either individually or as a group.

It's really important to do a review of your local complaints process,

and the Tool makes it really easy for you to take lived experience perspectives on making

a complaint and the different aspects of the complaint process, and apply it to your service.

This can make a really big difference for people with lived experience, consumers, carers

and family members, who rely on your service as well as staff working within the service.

It's a really great step towards building a positive complaints culture where

complaints are embraced and seen as an opportunity for continuous improvement.

On that note, we're always committed to continuous improvement at the MHCC,

so if you have any feedback, ideas or suggestions for the

Complaints Self-Assessment Tool, we would love to hear from you.

You can contact us at info@mhcc.vic.gov.au. We'd also love to hear from you if you

have any questions or would like some additional support when using the Tool.

But above all, we really hope the Tool has a positive impact on your local complaints

process at your service. and good luck!