Complaints Policy

Date adopted: 10.8.26 Review date: 10.8.27

Responsible person: Ange McMillan, Director

Purpose of This Complaints Policy

Elemental Health Ltd welcomes and encourages feedback of all kinds from our clients, trainees, and customers. If you have a complaint about our training, our counselling or supervision practice, our customer service, or about our associates, we want to resolve it to your satisfaction, and we also want to learn from it to improve our practice in future.

It is our policy to resolve complaints quickly and fairly, where possible without recourse to formal investigation or external bodies.

The aims of this policy are:

To provide a clear and fair procedure for anyone who wishes to make a complaint about Elemental Health Ltd, our training, our practice, or our associates
To ensure that everyone working for or with Elemental Health Ltd knows how to handle a complaint
To ensure that all complaints are handled equally, fairly, and in a timely fashion
To ensure that important information from complaints is used in future to help avoid the same situation arising again

What This Complaints Policy Covers

This policy applies to the provision of training, one to one counselling, and supervision by Elemental Health Ltd, to our customer service, and to our associates. Any reference in this policy to Elemental Health Ltd also includes our associates.

Complaints may relate to any of our activities, including but not limited to:

The quality of customer service you have received from Elemental Health Ltd
The behaviour or professional competence of our associates
Delays, defects, poor workmanship, or other problems associated with the provision of services by Elemental Health Ltd

The following are not considered complaints under this policy, and should be directed to Ange McMillan (Director) as general contact:

General questions about our training or practice
Matters concerning contractual or other legal disputes
Formal requests for the disclosure of information, for example under data protection law, which are handled under our Privacy Notice and Data Protection Policy

How to Make a Complaint

A complaint can be made:

By email, addressed to Angela McMillan at contact@ehe.org.uk
By telephone on 07766 764729
In writing

Please provide your name, address, telephone number, and email address, so we can contact you using your preferred method while your complaint is handled. If your complaint relates to a particular transaction, please include the details. If your complaint is about a particular associate, please include their name and, where appropriate, their role. Please include as much detail as possible, including dates, events, and people involved, any supporting documents or evidence, and what you would like us to do to resolve the complaint. We will make every reasonable effort to accommodate such requests, though we are not bound to take any action beyond what we are contractually or legally obliged to take.

How We Handle Your Complaint

On receipt of your complaint, the Director will log it and acknowledge receipt in writing within 7 days, giving you a complaint reference and details of your complaint handler
If your complaint relates to a specific associate, that person will be informed and given a fair opportunity to respond. Communication about the complaint should take place through the complaint handler rather than directly with the associate while it is being resolved
If we need further information or evidence from you, we will ask for it as soon as reasonably possible, and would ask you to provide it promptly to avoid delay
We aim to resolve complaints within one month. If this is not possible, particularly for a complex complaint, we will tell you the likely length of the delay and the reason for it
At the end of the process, we will give you full details of our investigation, our conclusions, and any action taken, regardless of the outcome

Data Protection Complaints

If your complaint is about how we have handled your personal information rather than about our training, practice, or an associate, you have the right to raise this directly with us. We will acknowledge your complaint without undue delay, look into it, and confirm the outcome to you, including your right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk) at any stage.

BACP and Professional Standards.

Angela McMillan is an accredited member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and works in line with the BACP Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions. If your complaint concerns the therapeutic conduct or ethical practice of Ange McMillan or another BACP registered associate, and you are not satisfied with how we have resolved it internally, you also have the right to raise this with BACP directly, either through their Get Help with Counselling Concerns service or their Professional Conduct Procedure, details of which are available at bacp.co.uk.

Confidentiality and Data Protection

All complaints and information relating to them are treated with the utmost confidence. Such information will only be shared with those associates of Elemental Health Ltd who need to know in order to handle your complaint.

We may ask your permission to use details of your complaint, with your personal details removed, for internal training and quality improvement purposes. If you have given such permission, you may revoke it at any time by contacting Ange McMillan, Director.

All personal information we collect is held in accordance with UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018, and your rights under that legislation.

Policy Responsibility and Review

Overall responsibility for this policy, and its implementation, lies with Ange McMillan, Director.

This policy is regularly reviewed and updated as required.