Reviewing the feedback and complaints leaflet - People Bank Involvement

Overview

We are making changes to one of our information leaflets that tells residents about adult social care. The aim of the leaflet is to explain to residents how they can share feedback with us or make a complaint when things go wrong. We asked some People Bank members to review the draft leaflet and tell us whether it was easy to understand.

Our user testers said:

1. The leaflet is in Plain English, making it easy to understand how to contact the department.
2. The leaflet makes it very clear what will happen when a person complains. 
3. The leaflet doesn't really explain the difference between feedback and a complaint. Unless there are very clear guidelines, a complaint could be confused as feedback when it isn't.
4. The statement at the start, explaining how information could be provided in another language or alternative format, would not be understood by those who don’t speak English. The statement could be translated into two or three of the more commonly used languages.

How we responded:

1. We agree that the first section could do a better job of explaining the difference between feedback and complaints. We will update it to make this clearer and give people the confidence to give feedback or complain as appropriate.
2. The statement on getting the information in other languages is already included in other languages, even though this wasn’t in the draft. For future feedback we’ll make this clear.

“My thanks to the reviewers. A clearer distinction between feedback and a complaint has made the leaflet clearer overall. We hope to get more feedback as a result.” - Project lead.