Complaints Policy
Our commitment to you
Children’s Liver Disease Foundation is the UK’s leading charity committed to taking action against childhood liver disease, providing information, emotional support, research funds and a voice for all affected. Our strength comes from the thousands of people who are committed to a single vision – a future free from the fear of childhood liver disease.
We aim to provide a high quality service to our supporters – we rely on you to support and fund our vital work – and to members of the public who turn to us for information and support and to provide a voice for childhood liver families.
We value your comments and feedback to help us to develop and improve the quality of everything we do. We are committed to establishing and maintaining good relations with all our stakeholders. Children’s Liver Disease Foundation is a member of the Fundraising Regulator.
Please tell us if we get it wrong
Sometimes, despite our best intentions, we do not always get things right. If you have any criticisms, concerns or complaints about Children’s Liver Disease Foundation’s activities, please let us know so that we can put things right if possible, and make improvements for the future.
We aim to ensure that
- It is as easy as possible to give feedback or make a complaint
- We treat as a complaint any clear expression of dissatisfaction with our activities
- We treat all feedback and complaints seriously, whether made by telephone, email, letter, fax or in person
- We deal with it quickly and politely – and within the timescales we have committed to
- We respond appropriately – for example giving you an explanation, information on any action taken, or an apology where we have got things wrong
- We learn from feedback and complaints, logging them, reviewing the log regularly and using them to improve our activities
Comments and feedback
We are always looking at how we can improve. We are grateful to supporters who tell us about their experience on CLDF events, activities and processes, in particular when you tell us what you think we could improve. We will acknowledge and respond to all feedback.
Sometimes though, you may want us to take more formal action, in which case, please use the process below:
Step 1: Contact us
You can call us, write to us or email us.
It is often a good idea to raise the problem informally by telephone with the person concerned. This is often the most effective way for us to find out exactly what has happened and to strive to resolve things very quickly and simply – and hopefully to your satisfaction.
If you would prefer to write to us or email us, please send your complaint in the first instance to the person you have already been dealing with at CLDF, or, if you prefer, or do not have a contact name, please send it to:
Children’s Liver Disease Foundation
36 Great Charles Street
Birmingham
B3 3JY
Or by email info@childliverdisease.org
Please make sure that you include your full name, address, and where possible a contact telephone number and email address.
We will try to resolve the problem straight away if we can. If we can’t do this, for example because the information we need is not to hand, or because we need to carry out further investigation, then we will make a record of your complaint and agree the best way and time to contact you. This will normally be within five working days unless we make some other arrangement that is acceptable to you.
Step 2: Taking your complaint further
If after initially raising the complaint, you are still unhappy with our response, the next step is to ask for it to be dealt with by someone more senior. Please set out clearly in writing (or in an email) the details of the complaint, explaining why you were not satisfied with our response and what you would like us to do to put things right.
You can send your letter, or email, to your previous contact (we are all committed to dealing with complaints promptly and as set out in our complaints procedure – so it will be dealt with in the same way, whoever receives it); but if you prefer, you can send it to the Support Team Manager or Head of Fundraising.
Your complaint will be acknowledged in writing or via email within three working days and the acknowledgement will say when you can expect a full response. This will normally be within ten working days, unless the matter is particularly complicated, in which case it may take us up to fifteen working days. If it is not going to be possible to give you a full response in that time, we will contact you anyway, and tell you when we expect to be able to provide a full response.
Step 3: The next stage
If you are still not satisfied with our full response, please let us know in writing, and tell us what you wish us to do next. Your complaint will be passed to the Chief Executive for further investigation and response. You can expect this to take a further ten working days from the date on which we receive your letter or email.
Taking your complaint outside CLDF
If your complaint is about our fundraising work or activities and you are not satisfied with the response from the Chief Executive, it is possible to ask the Fundraising Regulator to investigate further. Details of their Complaints Process are available on their website.
Their contact details are:
www.fundraisingregulator.org.uk
Fundraising Regulator
2nd floor, CAN Mezzanine Building
49-51 East Road
London
N1 6AH
To make a complaint, submit their online form
If your complaint is about any other aspect of our charitable work, you may wish to contact the Charity Commission:
Charity Commission
PO Box 1227
Liverpool
L69 3UG
How we use complaints we receive to improve our services
All the complaints we receive are recorded in a complaints log. Where appropriate, we use the information to make changes in our policies and procedures to improve the services we provide to our supporters. We report each year to our Senior Management Team, our Board of Trustees and the Fundraising Regulator on the complaints that have been received and the changes in process and procedures that we have made as a result.
