Many Hands Feedback Policy
We aim to give our best to everyone who is involved with Many Hands and we welcome all feedback from people who have used our services. Whether you are happy or unhappy about any aspect of our activity or work, we would like to hear about it. We know that listening to your views will help improve our work as an organisation.
We seek to deal with comments and complaints in a respectful, open, timely and responsible way within the constraints of our resources. In turn Many Hands expects people who make a complaint to communicate their concerns fairly and appropriately.
All comments will be treated with confidentiality except when made in relation to projects or activities not directly supervised and supported by Many Hands. In such instances, the comment or complaint shall be shared with the relevant third party such as the named university contact.
Thank you for helping us to provide a better service.
What does this policy cover?
This policy covers feedback about Many Hands’ mission and values, strategies, policies, objectives, decisions, activities, governance, performance, use of resources, and the behaviour of, for example, our partner staff and volunteer mentors.
How to give feedback
We encourage all feedback (comments, suggestions and complaints) in the first instance to be shared directly and informally with the individual(s) concerned. You can also contact the Many Hands Mentoring Programme Coordinator in whichever way is most convenient to you: mail, phone, or email. Unless a response is requested, the Programme Coordinator shall have discretion as to whether Many Hands will respond. If a response is required, comments will be made in writing and a reply will be sent within 15 working days.
Please remember to give us your name, address and contact telephone number.
Please be respectful of our staff and volunteers when you give your feedback. We will not respond to feedback that is abusive or offensive.
If you are dissatisfied with the response or it is unclear to whom the feedback should be addressed, or where the complaint is of a particularly serious nature and requires a formal response, please go to our Complaints Policy.
What happens after I submit my feedback?
Your feedback will be logged, and if you have requested a response we will aim to acknowledge your feedback within 15 working days. Your feedback will either be answered directly by the Programme Coordinator, who may be able to resolve it with an explanation or apology, or passed to the relevant partner staff member for a response, as appropriate.
Many Hands Complaints Policy
We aim to give our best to everyone who is involved with Many Hands and we welcome all feedback from people who have used our services. Whether you are happy or unhappy about any aspect of our activity or work, we would like to hear about it. We know that listening to your views will help improve our work as an organisation.
We seek to deal with comments and complaints in a respectful, open, timely and responsible way within the constraints of our resources. In turn Many Hands expects people who make a complaint to communicate their concerns fairly and appropriately.
All comments and complaints will be treated with confidentiality except when made in relation to projects or activities not directly supervised and supported by Many Hands. In such instances, the comment or complaint shall be shared with the relevant third party such as the named university contact.
Thank you for helping us to provide a better service.
Complaints Procedure
We have a three-stage complaints process. We will only investigate a complaint under stage two or three of the process, if stages one and two have already been undertaken.
Depending on the type of complaint, this may be best resolved using your University student complaint procedure. We will let you know if this is the case.
At any stage in the process, the outcome of the complaint may be confidential, for instance if it contains confidential information about staff members or people aged under 18 years old (students taking part in Many Hands are all over 18).
Stage 1:
In the first instance, you should address your complaint to the Many Hands Mentoring Programme Coordinator. We will acknowledge receipt your complaint within 48 hours and aim to resolve complaints as quickly as possible.
In our response, we will set out our understanding of the precise complaint and whether this can be dealt with under the Many Hands Complaint Policy or if the complaint should be made to your University student complaints team.
In some circumstances, we may need additional information from you and/or extra time to investigate the circumstances surrounding your complaint to ensure we take any appropriate action.
We will contact you to explain if we are doing this.
When the investigation is complete, we will contact you with the outcome and where permissible, include detail of the action to be taken to address this complaint and the time frame within which this shall be implemented.
We will do our best to ensure that any person making a complaint is satisfied with the way we handle it. However, if you are not happy with our response, or do not feel comfortable addressing the staff member directly involved, you can escalate your complaint to Stage 2.
Stage 2:
If you are unsatisfied with the response at Stage 1, you can contact us again asking us to escalate the complaint to Stage 2. You can do this by writing to the Many Hands Project Manager. We will acknowledge receipt your complaint within 48 hours.
Such requests must be made within 14 days of you being notified by Many Hands that the Stage 1 investigation is complete.
We will review the complaint and Stage 1 investigation with an aim to respond to you in writing within 15 working days. If there is any issue preventing us from replying within 15 working days, we will let you know and provide an alternative timeframe.
If, upon receipt of the outcome of the Stage 2 investigation, that for any reason you feel your complaint is still unresolved then you can appeal and escalate this to Stage 3.
Stage 3:
If you are unsatisfied with the response at Stage 2, you can contact us again asking us to escalate the complaint to Stage 3. You can do this by writing to the Many Hands Lead Partner. We will acknowledge receipt your complaint within 48 hours.
The complaint and previous investigations will be considered and discussed at the next Steering Group Meeting (meetings are held monthly). You will be informed of the date of the Steering Group Meeting for which your complaint will be discussed. The Steering Group contains members from all of the Many Hands Project partners. For the avoidance of doubt, if the complaint concerns the conduct of any member of staff, those individuals will not be present for that part of the meeting.
After the Steering Group meeting, the Many Hands Lead Partner will contact you no less than 10 days after the meeting to communicate a summary of the complaint along with the Steering Group’s response.
If there is any issue preventing us from replying within 10 working days we will let you know and provide an alternative timeframe.
This is our final stage of our complaints process. If you continue to feel that your complaint has not been dealt with fairly, we would advise that you contact your University student services team for further advice.