At The Advonet Group, we offer a Health Complaints Advocacy service that helps people in Leeds raise complaints about their care and treatment under the NHS, as per the NHS Complaint Regulations.
About the Service
These complaints can be about any NHS-funded care and treatment you have received anywhere, even if the NHS-funded treatment was provided by a private health service.
We are:
- Free, meaning it does not cost you to use our service
- Independent, meaning we do not work for the NHS, Leeds City Council or the Government, we only work for you, the client.
- Confidential, meaning anything you say to us is kept confidential within the service. There are exceptions to this, however, such as if we believe there is a safeguarding concern about you or someone else.
Waiting times
We currently have a waiting list in place for Health Complaints Advocacy. The waiting time is up to two weeks. We are sorry that people are having to wait this long and are actively training and recruiting advocates to carry out this type of work.
In the meantime, if you would like any pointers on making or starting your health complaint yourself, please call the office on 0113 244 0606 or email the team at hca@advonet.org.uk.
How We Can Help
Our Advocates are knowledgeable about the Health Complaints process and can support you with your complaint in several ways. For example:
- We can talk you through the process, and signpost you to correct service to raise the complaint with.
- We can help arrange for the service to contact you to take the complaint verbally.
- We can help you write a letter to the service by providing you with a template and providing amendments.
- We can help you by writing a letter with your input.
- We can help you raise ongoing concerns with a service if you are unhappy with their response to your complaint.
- We can help you prepare for local resolution meetings about your health complaint, or attend alongside you.
- When you have exhausted the complaint procedure with a service, we can help you take your complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman.
- We can help you discuss and ask for reasonable adjustments from the service around how they take the complaint and respond to it.
- If we cannot help you, we will try and signpost you to services that can help you.
If you have already started a complaint but would like support through the rest of the complaints process, we can help you.
What we cannot do
As advocates, we are only able to help within the NHS complaint procedures, and only with raising the complaint with the service.
This means we cannot help you raise a complaint to independent healthcare watchdogs, such as the CQC, the General Medical Council, the Nursing and Midwifery Council or other services.
We also cannot help with actions that are not part of the NHS Complaint Regulations, such as obtaining medical records, or going through legal processes such as medical negligence.
The NHS Complaint Regulations ask that complaints be brought to the service within 12 months of the incident you are complaining about happening, or within 12 months of you realising you had a reason to complain, such as getting access to medical records.
While complaints can be brought outside of that, it is at the service’s discretion if they investigate, and they often decline to investigate complaints outside of 18 months. Our involvement does not change this.
Our involvement does not change any outcome or how your complaint is investigated.
Who is the Service For?
Health Complaints Advocacy is for Leeds residents who want help to make a complaint about NHS funded treatment or an NHS service.
We are unable to assist with complaints about privately-funded treatment.
Further Information
Health Complaints Advocacy also supports young people who would like help to raise a complaint about their NHS care or treatment. If you are a young person, our Young Person’s Advocate will be able to support you.
How to Access the Service
Leeds residents are able to refer for the support of a Health Complaints Advocate by:
Calling our First Contact Team on 0113 244 0606
Filling out a referral form available on our website
Professionals are also able to refer individuals that they think might benefit from a Health Complaints Advocate using the options above.
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