Share a complaint, comment, compliment, or suggestion through our online form

However you interact with Trinity, as a patient, carer, supporter, customer, or in some other way, we hope you are satisfied with your experience.

If you have any concerns or complaints however, we want to hear them, so we can learn from your experience and where necessary, improve the way we do things.

Your views are important to us. They help us to know what we are doing well and where we can improve. Our aim is to treat any concern or complaint in the strictest confidence, and in a courteous and open way, so that we understand your concerns and respond to them promptly and thoroughly.

Sharing a comment, suggestion or complaint on behalf of another person

Anyone who is unhappy with the services we provide can share a complaint, suggestion or comment. In the following circumstances, a complaint may be raised on behalf of another:

• If the person concerned has consented for a representative to act on their behalf
• If the person concerned has died
• If the person concerned is under 18
• If the person concerned is unable to make a complaint due to compromised capacity (as defined in Mental Capacity Act 2005)

How to share a comment, suggestion or complaint

There are several ways to let us know what you think about our services and your experience. You can:

• Fill in our online form. This allows you to feed back to us either anonymously or with your contact details.
• Fill in a feedback card, which are available in different areas around the hospice. A member of staff can direct you to the nearest one.
• Speak to a member of staff, who will listen to what you have to say and try to sort out any problems. If they are unable to help, they will explain what the next steps might be.
• Write to, or email the Executive team ([email protected]). Please try to give as much information about the nature of your concern as you can, for example, what, where and when any incident occurred. You can give your letter to any member of staff, hand it in at reception, or send it in the post, addressed to the Executive team. Your letter will be acknowledged within two working days.
• Contact your local Clinical Commissioning Group to complain about your care. Please ask us for details about who to contact.

We understand that it can be difficult and distressing to complain about your care or treatment, particularly if you do not feel well. We will support you by talking to you about your concerns and trying to address and/or resolve them quickly and satisfactorily. We can provide access to interpreter services if you need them.

Support available

There are many organisations that can offer you free help, support and advice on how to make a complaint. These include:

• Citizen’s Advice Tel: 08444 111 444 Text: Relay 08444 111 445
• London Independent Health Complaints Advocacy Service can support you in making a health complaint or to get some advice and support. Tel: 0203 553 5960
• Your local council may provide support for people making, or considering making, a complaint about their care or treatment.

What happens once you share a concern or complaint

Once we have received your concern or complaint we will agree with you whether it can be resolved by staff in the team that the issue arose. If it can’t, then it may be best to deal with it through our formal complaints process.

If your complaint is dealt with formally, we will:

• Write to you within two working days to confirm that we have received your complaint and are investigating it.
• Investigate your complaint within 20 working days and let you know what we find out and whether we need to change any areas of practice.
• Let you know if we cannot respond within the timeframe (this is unusual and we will let you know the reason for the delay and when we will be able to respond).

If your complaint involves other organisations as well as Trinity, we will agree with you and them whether the issues should be handled separately. Alternatively, we may work together to provide you with a joint response.

If you would like a copy of our full concerns and complaints policy, please call or email us.

Taking your complaint further

If you are still unhappy after we have investigated your concern or complaint, you can ask for it to be independently reviewed. We can provide you with more details of how to do this.

Organisations that can help you include:

• The Department of Health’s Ombudsman (reviews NHS funded care)
  Parliamentary & Health Service Ombudsman
  Millbank Tower
  London SW1P 4QP
  Call: 0345 015 4033

• The Care Quality Commission
  151 Buckingham Palace Road
  London SW1W 9SZ
  Call: 03000 616161
  The CQC can provide advice on who to contact if you are complaining about a service provided at Trinity that is not funded by the NHS.

• Fundraising Regulator
  2nd Floor, CAN Mezzanine Building
  49-51 East Road
  London N1 6AH
  Call: 0300 999 3407
  
  

If you are concerned about the way we managed your complaint, you can ask the Chair of our Board of Trustees to review the process.

Our donor charter

In response to the recent Cross Party Review of Fundraising Report by Sir Stuart Etherington, we have produced a donor charter. We hope that this document will help assure our existing and potential donors that as an organisation we strive for the very highest standards in everything that we do and that we take our responsibility towards our donors extremely seriously at all times.