Complaint Handling Guide
The Complaint Handling Guide: Upholding the rights of children and young people supports organisations to build their capacity in:
- handling complaints involving children
- creating child safe cultures.
This guide gives organisations practical advice on how to develop, implement and maintain complaint-handling systems that prioritise child safety and promote the rights of children and young people to have a voice in decisions that affect them.
The guide is designed to support organisations of all sizes to strengthen their capacity to respond to complaints and concerns involving children, and to build child safe cultures.
What the guide includes
The guide is divided into 9 guidelines, each addressing a key component of an effective, child‑focused complaint‑handling process and system.
To support organisations in navigating and applying the guidance, the guide is accompanied by:
- a fact sheet
- a reference guide.
Appendices
The guide also contains several appendices that help organisations understand and implement the 9 guidelines. Some appendices are designed to function as standalone tools that can be adapted to suit different organisational contexts.
You can also download the appendices individually.
The guide's development
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse identified flaws in how some institutions responded to complaints of child sexual abuse. This included instances where institutions did not have clear complaint-handling policies and procedures.
In response to these findings, Principle 6 of the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations states that organisations should have processes to respond to complaints and concerns that are child-focused and that uphold the rights of children and young people.
To support this, the National Office commissioned the Office of the NSW Ombudsman to develop the guide.
The guide was developed through a national consultation process, involving the Office of the eSafety Commissioner, Australian Human Rights Commission and children's guardians, commissioners and ombudsman's offices across Australia.