At ATWC, we are committed to treating all of our clients with respect and confidentiality and to ensuring they are involved in decision-making relating to the services we provide.

As an ATWC client, you have a right to:

• Be treated with respect and care regardless of your age, gender, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation or religion
• A professional, accountable service with full information provided to you about that service so you can choose whether it is appropriate for you
• Confidentiality: Information about you will not be disclosed unless there is risk of harm to your or to others, or you have signed a consent form for it to be released
• Access to information held about you
• Know the name and roles of everyone involved in your care. You also have the right to be told why someone not directly involved in your care (e.g. students on placement at ATWC) may be present and you can refuse to have such people present
• Complain if you are dissatisfied with the service

Questions and Complaints

We understand that asking questions or making a complaint may not be easy for many people, for all sorts of reasons. But we welcome your feedback so that we can evaluate our services and continue to improve them.

We believe many complaints can be quickly resolved by taking a positive, problem-solving approach to them at a local level. Our complaints procedure is based on:

• resolving any problems as close as possible to the point of service delivery
• responding speedily to complaints or queries
• listening to and understanding a complaint, rather than simply asking for it to be put in writing
• independence and fairness to everyone involved
• confidentiality
• recording the complaint and learning from it

Depending on their nature, complaints and questions may be directed to individual ATWC staff members, service directors or to the CEO. In the first instance, please send any complaints to: [email protected]

Important

ATWC cannot investigate specific cases of child abuse. If you have concerns about a child’s welfare you should contact the police or the Child Youth and Family National Contact Centre on 0508 FAMILY (0508 326 459) and 0508 CARERS (0508 227 377).

Complaints received by ATWC that raise child protection issues be referred to the police or Child Youth and Family.