Complaints Policy

1.0 SUMMARY:

If you use YouthLink services, you have the right to share any complaints or concerns you have about the services through a respectful and confidential process. YouthLink is committed to providing good customer service. When you first sign up for our services, we’ll give you information about your rights and how to make a complaint. We also make sure that complaint forms are easy to find for everyone. Our goal is to make sure you’re treated well and that any problems get solved.

2.0 WHAT YOU CAN COMPLAIN ABOUT:

You can complain if you are not happy with any part of our services or with how staff treated you. This includes things that go against our own rules or if you feel your rights have not been respected. Anyone at YouthLink, including staff and managers, can receive your complaint. If you feel that your rights have not been respected, you may also contact the Ontario Ombudsman’s Children and Youth Unit for support making a complaint.

3.0 WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR HANDLING COMPLAINTS:

If someone at YouthLink knows about a complaint, they must follow our process and respond. It’s is the responsibility of all staff to cooperate and help
resolve complaints to the best of their ability.

4.0 HOW TO MAKE A COMPLAINT:

If you are not happy with our services, you can complain in person, by email to complaints@youthlink.ca, or by mail to 636 Kennedy Road, Scarborough ON, M1K 2B3. If you
are making your complaint in writing, you can use a form called the Client Complaint Form.

5.0 HOW WE HANDLE, INVESTIGATE AND SOLVE COMPLAINTS:

If you have a complaint, let a staff member know as soon as you can. They will tell their manager about it that same day. If you made the complaint in writing, someone will confirm they received it within 24 hours.

If you make a verbal complaint that a staff member was able to fix to your satisfaction, it will not have to go through a full written complaint process. But if the problem was not solved, or it was a serious issue, even if you don’t want to write it down, a staff member will do it for you and check with you to make sure it’s right.

Any complaint that has to do with a young person’s rights, or that has to do with safety, will be written down and investigated. The manager or director closest to the complaint will put someone in charge of fixing the problem. Until the problem gets solved, the person in charge will provide updates to their manager every week, and to the person who made the complaint every 15 days, but we always try to find a solution within 5 days if we can. If you choose to make a complaint anonymously (without giving your name), you won’t get these updates.

The person dealing with your complaint will try to find a solution with you, and will try to fix the problem as quickly as possible.

6.0 WHAT HAPPENS NEXT:

Once the problem gets solved, a description of the solution gets sent to a YouthLink Director to decide if anything else needs to be done. They will decide when a complaint has been solved, and will inform the people involved and our CEO.

If the complaint is about something that could happen again, our team will figure out what we can do so that it doesn’t happen to anyone else and we’ll take steps to prevent the issue from repeating.

If the complaint is about our Live-In Treatment program, we make sure to review the decision with the young person and anyone else involved within 7 days. Young people can have someone with them as support, like a parent or guardian, if that’s something they want.

What if I’m still not happy?
If you don’t agree with the decision, or think more needs to be done, you can ask the next person in charge to look into it, including our CEO, and our Board of Directors.

Any young people we serve, and their families, can contact the Ontario Ombudsman’s Children and Youth Unit for more help.

Young people from the Shelter and Housing program can contact the City of Toronto Shelter Support and Housing Administration department for more help.

Young people from the Live-In Treatment program can also contact the Area Manager of the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services for more help.

7.0 No exceptions:  No one can make exceptions to these rules without the CEO saying it’s okay.