Comments and Feedback
We are always keen to gain feedback from people using our services; good, bad and indifferent. We have feedback questionnaires which will be shared with you at the end of your involvement with us, however you can ask for a feedback form at any time, by emailing info@autismoxford.org.uk
Concerns and Complaints
At Autism Oxford UK we pride ourselves in providing a high-quality service to autistic people and their support network. Unfortunately, we are human and sometimes we do not get things quite right, or the service offer you have experienced may of fallen short of the high standards you and we expect.
If you are unhappy with the service you have received, we first ask you to approach the staff member you have been liaising with and share your concerns. They will listen to your concerns and will respond to try and resolve these concerns.
If you are unhappy with the response we have offered, we would ask you to make your concerns formal and place them in writing and address to our Managing Director at info@autismoxford.org.uk who will investigate your concerns in more detail. We call this a formal complaint. We aim to acknowledge your complaint within 5 workings days and will then investigate over the next 21 working days. We will then provide you with a written response to your complaint.
Once you have received our response to your complaint and you have had an opportunity to review- we hope you are satisfied with our response. However, if you continue to be unhappy with the response, you can escalate this to our CEO. We call this a level 2 complaint. Our CEO will review your original concern, our response to the formal complaint and will also facilitate a call with yourself to discuss any outstanding concerns. Our CEO will then provide a formal written response within 21 working days from the escalation.
If you are still dissatisfied, you can seek independent advice on what to do next.
What you can expect from our concerns and complaints process
We will listen to your concerns and complaint. We are keen to try get things right for people.
When we get things wrong, we will provide an apology.
We will provide you with an explanation to any near misses or when things have gone wrong. It’s important we provide information about how we reached our response to your concern and complaint.
By raising concerns or a complaint, we want to reassure you, it will not impact on the care and services you receive from us.
When there is not an agreement about the outcome of an assessment.
We are proud of our assessment service and ensuring that parents and individuals feel listened to. When engaging with us to undertake an autism assessment, this does not guarantee a diagnosis will be given. Our team use NICE recommended tools to support assessment of autism and have several years of experience assessing autism and the different profiles that can present.
However, we can only provide a clinical opinion and formulation on the information obtained throughout the assessment process.
All our team have undertaken formal training in the assessment tools used and also undertake regular coding consistency training. This ensures we continue to provide high standards to our assessments and consistency across our team.
Sometimes we are not able to conclude an assessment and may advise a period of treatment or support for other needs. After this the team will review the information and complete further assessments to be able to reach a conclusion. There are no additional costs associated with this.
When the team conclude no diagnosis of autism, the individual or family are within their rights to request an second review by another one our psychologists. This needs to be requested within 14 days of the feedback meeting. We may ask other team members to complete additional screenings or interviews as part of this review. There is an additional charge of £100 for this second review.
If you continue to be unhappy with the outcome of the assessment, you may wish to seek a second opinion by another provider or the NHS. In these instances, we request you give consent for us to liaise with the second opinion provider and to release the recording of the observation assessment for ‘second scoring’. This will enable them to be able to accurately assess all the information.
If the second opinion reaches a different formulation.
We do not provide refunds in relation to the outcome of the assessment. The cost of assessment is used to cover the team members time and materials used for your assessment.