The provider must take necessary steps to safeguard and promote the welfare of children – EYFS legal requirements

Aims and objectives
We aim to be fair, open and honest in giving all complaints and concerns due consideration and to resolve through dialogue and mutual understanding.
The objective of this policy is to deal effectively with complaints, concerns and compliments by putting the interests and welfare of our children above all else.

Concerns and complaints
We are committed to providing a high-quality service and building positive relationships with parents/carers, but understand that sometimes concerns and complaints can arise. Concerns and complaints are respected, valued and appropriately responded to. We want to know about any aspect of the service we provide that may be a cause for concern or unhappiness and we will always do our best to resolve any concerns and complaints.

We are committed to learning from concerns and complaints and will use these to improve our service. All concerns and complaints will be dealt with sensitively and confidentially. If required, a private meeting will be arranged to discuss these and help to determine how best the matter can be dealt with and the timescale for doing so.

We will retain a written record of all concerns and complaints and how they were resolved for a minimum of three years.

A safeguarding accident or incident with be retained until the child is 21yrs 8 months.

Procedure

• General complaints/concerns procedure
• Any parent/carer, member of staff, or visitor who wishes to raise a concern or make a complaint about our services, the conduct of a member of staff, or something they may have seen or heard, can do so by following the procedures:
• Initially speak with the child’s teacher or any member of staff.
• If still dissatisfied or unhappy to do this for any reason, make an appointment to meet with the Head of Nursery
• If someone wants to make a formal complaint, this must be put in writing and addressed to the Executive Head Teacher. This will be acknowledged immediately and responded to in 5 days’ time as well as being retained in the complaints file.
• We must notify you of the outcome within 28 days.
• The level of action and any investigation will be relevant to the nature of the concern/complaint.
• In the case of no satisfactory resolution being found, it may be felt necessary to contact the Governing Body via the school office, Careline on 0151 233 3700 or Ofsted on 0300 123 1231.
• Complaint against a member of staff
• If a complaint is made against a member of staff, a full investigation will be conducted.
• If the complaint is a serious allegation against a member of staff around their ability to care for or keep children safe, that member of staff will be immediately suspended and the Keeping Children Safe in Education policy and Safeguarding policy will be followed. There will be a full investigation until a satisfactory outcome is reached.
• If the complaint does not question a member of staff’s ability to care for or to keep children safe, suspension or other procedures will not begin unless the outcome of any investigation warrants such action.
• A member of staff against whom a complaint has been made will be given a copy of the complaint and informed that the head teacher will investigate it, (unless this is determined as harmful to the fair outcome of the investigation).

For any complaints that Ofsted contact us about, we will endeavour to:

• provide them with as much information as they require;
• make all information, actions and resolutions regarding the complaint available to Ofsted if the complaint has previously been made to us;
• Inform Ofsted in the event of an allegation being made regarding a member of staff.
• There will be ongoing monitoring of this policy as some aspects may require amending/updating before the review date should there be any incidents which take place relating to it that give cause for concern. If a parent has a complaint about the service provided they are initially asked to raise this with a member of staff. If they do not feel confident to speak to staff or their concerns are not resolved they can raise their complaint with a member of the leadership team.

Monitoring and review
This policy was agreed and implemented on 5th July 2023 is due for review July 2024