Complaints procedure

Girlguiding HQ

The complaints team assess concerns and complaints reported to Girlguiding HQ. They offer support and advice to try to resolve complaints locally. When a formal investigation is necessary, the team work alongside commissioners to support and guide volunteers investigating a complaint. Complaints about staff members may be referred to the human resources team or the relevant manager as needed. The volunteer support team work with the complaints team to pass on any feedback we get to the relevant teams.

Volunteers in local guiding, including commissioners

Local leaders and commissioners can help others to raise and resolve concerns or complaints locally, offering support and advice on having open and honest conversations. If a formal investigation is necessary, the Girlguiding HQ complaints team will work with a local volunteer, usually a commissioner not involved in the complaint, to investigate and manage complaints about local guiding. This includes complaints about staff employed by other levels of Girlguiding, like counties, countries and regions.

Including the following information will help us to resolve the concern or complaint as quickly as possible:

• Your name, contact details, country or region, and your role in Girlguiding, if appropriate.
• Say you want to make a complaint.
• Who or what you’re making a complaint about, including names and membership numbers, if you know them.
• Where and when the situation or events related to your complaint happened.
• The outcome you’re looking for by raising your complaint.

It would be helpful if you could also include: 

• A short, clear summary. You could use bullet points and notes, so long as they follow a logical order .
• If you’re complaining about your child’s unit, please give us their full name and date of birth so we can find her on our membership system.
• Any supporting documents or correspondence.

We don’t expect you to prove the truth of what you’re saying. But you’ll need to give us enough information to understand what your complaint is about and to show it’s something we can look into.

If someone has asked you to report a concern or complaint for them, you should encourage them to get in touch with the Girlguiding HQ complaints team directly.

If they don't feel comfortable doing this, we’ll need to get consent from the volunteer, young member or their parent or carer who raised the concern with you before the Girlguiding HQ complaints team can look into it. To investigate a complaint relating to a young member’s experience, we must get consent from the parent or carer email address registered on GO.

If you’re concerned about the capacity of an adult at risk to make a complaint, contact the Girlguiding HQ safeguarding team at [email protected].

When making a complaint, you don’t have to give your name or role if you don’t want to. We’ll respect this. However, we encourage you to, because it makes it easier for us to look into your concern.

You’ve got 2 options if you want to make a complaint anonymously:

Option 1: we’ll record your contact details, and share these with the complaints officer and the volunteer leading the investigation.

They’ll contact you before making any other enquiries or letting anyone else know about the complaint. During this first discussion they’ll make sure you’re happy with their proposed way forward and how they’ll keep in touch with you.

No one else will be made aware of who made the complaint unless you agree to this.

Option 2: we’ll record the details of your complaint, but not your name or contact details.

You’ll need to give us enough information to identify a specific volunteer or unit so we can look into your complaint. The complaints officer or the volunteer leading the investigation won’t be able to contact you to ask for more information or to tell you the outcome.

Please note, we’ll have to inform the person concerned that a complaint has been raised about them.

We’ll let you know we’ve received your message within 5 working days. If we’re receiving an unexpectedly high number of emails, we may take longer to answer. But we’ll let you know to expect this in our automatic response email, which you should get straight after you email us.

If a local resolution is possible but hasn’t been attempted, a complaints officer will advise you and offer to put you in touch with local volunteers who can help you towards resolving the problem locally.

If we confirm that your concern or complaint will be investigated formally, we’ll pass the information on to an investigator as set out in the investigation procedure. As complaints about local guiding are investigated by volunteers, timescales can vary depending on the availability of volunteers.

You must send any evidence you want to share with the investigator appointed to look into your complaint within 10 working days of them contacting you. You can ask to extend this deadline – granting this is at Girlguiding’s discretion. If the investigator doesn’t get your evidence on time, we may decide we can’t continue the investigation.

We consider each complaint on a case-by-case basis and each will take a different length of time to resolve. The investigator will keep you updated on how your case is progressing.

If the complaints process is taking longer than anticipated, the investigator will let you know. They’ll also be in touch at least once a month until the complaint is closed, unless you agree something different.

• If appropriate, thank the person who raised the concern or complaint for bringing it to your attention. We can’t improve if people don’t let us know about problems they’re having.
• Decide the best way to communicate with the person raising the concern or complaint. Think about if it would be easier to talk about the problem in person, in an online meeting, or by phone, email or text. Each way has benefits and drawbacks. What works for dealing with one complaint may not work for another.
• If you communicate by email or text, think about how you word things to avoid misunderstandings. It can be easy to come across as rude or angry without meaning to.
• If it’s a complex issue, offer to meet in person or have an online meeting. It doesn’t need to be a formal meeting, but try not to meet the person who raised the concern or complaint alone. You could have a quick chat at the end of a unit meeting when other volunteers are still packing up. Or you could arrange a time to meet them in a local café or online with your commissioner. Tell them your commissioner will be joining you so it’s not a surprise. And let them know they can bring a friend or family member along too.
• Listen and ask questions to make sure you understand the issue.
• Find out how they’d like to resolve the issue. It may not always be possible to do as they ask, but you may be able to agree on a compromise.
• Acknowledge if a mistake has been made or if they’ve been impacted negatively by Girlguiding.
• After your in-person conversation or online meeting, send a written summary of what you talked about and agreed. This helps to make sure everyone’s on the same page. Ask the person who raised the concern or complaint to confirm they agree with your summary, or to let you know if they disagree with anything you’ve written.
• Think about what you can put in place to prevent something similar happening in the future. Share any learning with others in your unit or local area too. It might be appropriate to let the person who raised the concern or complaint know what actions will be taken. If you’re not sure if this is appropriate, check with our complaints team at HQ or your country or region office before sharing.
• Keep notes of the actions you’ve taken and any you’ve agreed to take.