Your feedback can help shape and improve the service you receive

It is important for us to understand your experience of dealing with Dumfries and Galloway Council. If there is an area where we could do better, we want to learn from your experience and improve how we deliver our services.

A comment might be views about how we have handled a situation or delivered a service. It is best to pass a comment straight to the school so that we can take any necessary action. You may be suggesting an improvement to what we do or a change to how we operate. If you have something you would like to raise, we will always ask you to discuss any concerns or issues you have initially with your:

• Nursery manager or primary class teacher if the enquiry relates to classroom practice.
• Head teacher if the enquiry relates to whole school matters or you require an unresolved classroom issue to be discussed further.
• Parent Council and/or Connect (the membership organisation to support your Parent Council) if your enquiry relates to whole school matters linked to Parental Involvement.
• In secondary, the teacher with responsibility for Personal Social and Emotional Supervision followed by the Head teacher.

If you are not happy with the response you receive or a decision that has been made, you can Ask us to Look Again. You can do this by contacting us at the email address: ParentalInvolvement@dumgal.gov.uk. At this point an Officer will contact you and discuss the issue and direct the enquirer as appropriate.

Remember you can also access Dumfries and Galloway Have Your Say at Have your say – Dumfries and Galloway Council.

If you remain dissatisfied and wish to make a formal complaint

If you remain dissatisfied, the Education, Skills and Community Wellbeing Directorate operates within the complaints handling procedures for Dumfries and Galloway Council. Information on this can be found on the following webpages: Have your say and Complaints and compliments.

Normally, you must make your complaint within six months of the event you want to complaint about.

Compliments

It is important for us to know when we are getting it right. If you have positive feedback about a service or staff member, it is useful for us to know. When we receive a compliment, it is passed on to the relevant manager and fed back to the staff involved in delivering that service.

Make a comment or compliment

If you don’t want to speak to the service directly and you want to provide feedback on how we have handled a situation or delivered a service, or you want to give us a compliment you can do this online at Complaints and compliments – Dumfries and Galloway Council.

Child Friendly Complaints

The national Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO) has been working on a new approach to handle complaints that involve children, to ensure the complaints procedures under their remit meet children’s rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child (UNCRC). More information on this can be found at: https://www.unicef.org.uk/what-we-do/un-convention-child-rights/.

With the help of children, young people and staff from a wide range of public bodies including Dumfries and Galloway, SPSO have co-designed seven Child Friendly Complaints Handling Principles which have been agreed by the Scottish Government. The SPSO expect all public bodies under their jurisdiction to take these into consideration when handling complaints involving children.

The process guidance can be found at: https://www.spso.org.uk/sites/spso/files/CFC/CFCProcedure.pdf.

By taking this approach of focusing on core principles supported by best practice guidance, SPSO hope to provide us with the flexibility to continue with existing local good practice, whilst also providing detailed step-by-step guidance for those who would find it useful.