If you feel you are not receiving the right level of support and/or service from a professional, who is working with yourself and/or your child, you have the right to make a formal complaint. Each service has its own complaint process. We would advise you to look over the complaint process for the individual service which can be found on their website.
School complaints
- For Local authority maintained school – we would advise you to follow the school’s complaint process. However, if you are unsatisfied with the outcome of your complaint, you have the right to escalate the complaint further to the Local Authority.
- For Academy schools, we would advise you to follow their complaints procedure. However, if you are unsatisfied with the outcome of your complaint you can escalate this further with the Educational Skills Funding Agency and then the Secretary of State.
- For an independent nursery and/or school, we would advise you to follow their complaints process. However, if you are unsatisfied with the outcome of your complaint you can escalate this further to Ofsted.
Local Authority complaints
- Local authority – we advise you to follow their complaints process. However, if you are unsatisfied with the outcome of your complaint you can escalate this further to the Local Government Social Care Ombudsman and then to a Judicial Review.
For more information, please follow the links below:
https://www.lgo.org.uk/make-a-complaint/fact-sheets/education/special-educational-needs
https://www.gov.uk/complain-about-school
Social Care complaints
If you have a complaint regarding social care provision in Sunderland, we would advise you take a look over the following link:
Health complaints
If you are unhappy with a health care provider, we would advise you follow the below link in order to explore their complaints policies: