Outreach and Public Engagement Officer
In 2024, we started running workshops where voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations become Complaint Champions. This gives them the tools they need to help people who use their services navigate the complex complaints landscape.
The workshops are just one of the ways our Outreach and Public Engagement Team helps organisations learn the skills they need to guide people through the complaints process. We hope this will increase public awareness of our organisation and remove some of the barriers for people accessing our services.
About the workshops
In the workshops, we explain:
- what an Ombudsman does
- how to find the right Ombudsman for your complaint
- what we can and cannot investigate
- the journey of a complaint at our organisation, from calling our intake team to publishing our final decisions.
Attendees leave with a better understanding of the complaints process, the knowledge to identify the right Ombudsman for the right situation, and practical tips to help them support people who use their services.
We’ve also been able to connect participants with other areas of our organisation to help us improve our services or potentially identify systemic issues.
Feedback from participants
Participants have told us they found the workshop accessible, clear and informative. Feedback included:
“Excellent, informative and accessible. Very well done team!” – OPAAL
“The workshop was clear and informative and provided an overview of most aspects of the role of the PHSO within the time frame. Good to gain an understanding of the joint work that's undertaken alongside other ombudsmen.” – Impact Advice Money First Service
“The overview of PHSO's remit and function was very helpful.” – Group B Strep Support
Empowering larger organisations
We deliver the workshops twice a month online. We can also provide a bespoke, closed session to support organisations with more than ten members. In October, we did just that with an organisation that supports the Roma community. They said:
“Thank you for taking time to meet with our organisation today, it was one of the clearest and most useful intro sessions we have had from an external organisation. A really nice, friendly and informative approach. The communication up to the session was also very clear (sending links, sending info about the session, etc).” Roma Support Group
We can also deliver workshops in person for organisations with more than ten team members. We ran a series of these workshops around London in December.
We visited Crisis, the homeless charity, and Advocate, a legal assistance charity. We also delivered a workshop at Tottenham Town Hall for a group of community workers from across Haringey. Carers First said:
“The key points I took were the differences between complaints for local authorities and NHS and how there are so many ombudsmen. The aspect I found most useful was the knowledge of the facilitators and their openness to questions.” Carers First
Get involved
If you would like to reserve a place at one of our workshops, please visit our Eventbrite page and select a date.
If you’re interested in a bespoke workshop for your organisation, you can contact us at public.engagement@ombudsman.org.uk
