Complaint Handling Awareness

Complaint handling awareness training for care teams, delivered at your workplace or live online in half a day. How to receive a complaint well, put things right early, keep conversations with families calm, and know exactly where a complaint goes next.

Working outside health and social care or need a full complaints and conflict resolution course? We can refer you to our trusted partner; Quarterdeck.

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Course Overview

Most complaints in care start as a question nobody answered. A daughter asks why her mum’s hearing aid keeps going missing. A son rings twice about a late call and hears nothing back. By the time it’s written down as a complaint, the family has already decided nobody is listening.

Complaint handling awareness training teaches care staff how to receive a complaint properly, respond in a way that calms things down rather than winding them up, and pass it on correctly so it is recorded, investigated and learned from. It also covers the conflict that sits around complaints in care: tense conversations with relatives and visitors, and friction between colleagues that spills over into the care people receive.

The course reflects CQC Regulation 16: Receiving and acting on complaints, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s guidance for adult social care providers, Regulation 20: Duty of candour, the Equality Act 2010 and Care Certificate Standard 3: Duty of care, which covers handling comments and complaints and dealing with conflict and difficult situations.

This is an awareness course built for health and social care settings. It covers verbal de-escalation only, not physical intervention or restrictive practice, and it doesn’t replace your safeguarding, duty of candour or HR procedures. Organisations outside health and social care can ask us for a referral to our preferred partner, Quarterdeck.

Course Details

• Duration: Half day (3 hours)
• Delivery: Face-to-face in-house or remote (Zoom or Teams)
• Certificate: Certificate of Achievement in Complaint Handling Awareness
• Awarding organisations: HTN CPD-Assessed
• Validity: No formal expiry. A refresher is recommended every 1 to 3 years, or sooner following changes to complaints procedures, legislation, or organisational practice.
• Group size: Maximum 12 learners per trainer

Who This Course Is For

This course is right for anyone who deals with complaints, concerns, or challenging interactions. This course is for anyone in a care service who might hear a complaint first, deal with it on the spot, or decide what happens next.

• Care assistants and support workers
• Senior carers and team leaders
• Deputy managers, registered managers and anyone who investigates or responds to complaints
• Domiciliary care, residential and nursing home staff
• Supported living and day service staff
• Personal assistants employed through Personal Health Budgets or Direct Payments

Frontline staff learn what to do in the moment. Seniors and managers also look at acknowledging, investigating, responding and signposting, so the whole process holds together from the first conversation to the final letter.

Not sure whether this course fits your team? Get in touch, and we’ll help you work it out before you book.

Why Does Complaint Handling Matter in Care?

Complaints about adult social care rose 22% in 2025-26, and the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman upheld 77% of the cases it investigated, according to its annual review. The Ombudsman says many complaints come down to poor communication with people and their families, which every member of staff can change on their next shift.

CQC Regulation 16 requires every provider to have an accessible complaints system. People must be able to complain to any member of staff; all staff must know how to respond; and nobody’s care can suffer because they complained.

CQC doesn’t investigate individual complaints. If a complaint can’t be resolved locally, the person can take it to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, including when they pay for their own care. The Ombudsman’s free toolkit for care providers asks providers to make that route clear. Handling complaints well pays off: around a third of upheld complaints about private providers had already been put right before the Ombudsman stepped in.

What the Session Covers

All content reflects CQC Regulation 16, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’s guidance for care providers, Regulation 20: Duty of candour, the Equality Act 2010 and Care Certificate Standard 3. Topics covered include:

• What counts as a complaint, including a concern raised in passing
• How requests turn into complaints, and how to stop that happening
• Receiving a complaint well: listening, acknowledging and not getting defensive
• What CQC Regulation 16 expects from every member of staff
• Reasonable adjustments, so people with communication needs, dementia or a learning disability can complain too
• Recording a complaint clearly and passing it on correctly
• De-escalating tense conversations with relatives and visitors
• When a complaint is also a safeguarding concern or triggers the duty of candour
• Conflict between colleagues: raising it early, and when it becomes a grievance
• Unreasonable or abusive behaviour: staying fair and staying safe
• For seniors and managers: acknowledging, investigating, responding and signposting to the Ombudsman
• Learning from complaints so the same thing doesn’t happen twice

Every session also builds in your own complaints policy, your escalation routes and any recent complaints or inspection feedback you want covered.

How the Course Is Delivered

This course is available face-to-face at your workplace or chosen venue, or live online via Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Both formats are fully interactive. Online delivery is a live session. This is a half-day course, delivered face-to-face at your workplace or chosen venue, or live online via Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Online sessions are live, with the same scenarios and discussion as the room-based version, not a recorded module.

Nobody goes into care to handle complaints, but everyone in care ends up doing it. So the session is built on the situations your staff actually meet: a relative questioning a bruise at visiting time, a family member unhappy about a missed call, two colleagues who have stopped speaking on shift. Learners practise what to say, what not to say, and what to write down afterwards.

Delivery includes:

• Scenario practice: receiving a complaint face to face, by phone and in writing
• Practising calm, honest responses to angry or upset relatives
• Working through when a complaint is also a safeguarding concern
• Writing a clear, factual complaint record

Where seniors and managers are in the room, we spend extra time on acknowledging, investigating and responding, using your own policy and letter templates.

Complaint, Safeguarding Concern or Grievance?

A complaint, a safeguarding concern and a staff grievance can all start with the same conversation, but each one follows a different route.

• Complaint: someone is unhappy with the care or service. It goes through your complaints procedure under CQC Regulation 16 and, if it can’t be resolved, to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.
• Safeguarding concern: the complaint suggests someone is experiencing, or at risk of, abuse or neglect. Follow your safeguarding procedure straight away, alongside the complaint. Our Adult Safeguarding Level 1 & 2 course covers this in depth.
• Duty of candour: if a notifiable safety incident has happened, Regulation 20 requires the provider to tell the person, apologise and explain what will happen next, whether or not they have complained.
• Grievance: a member of staff is unhappy about how they are treated at work. That is an HR matter, handled under your grievance procedure. Acas has guidance on resolving conflict at work early and informally.

This course teaches staff to spot which route applies and who to tell. It doesn’t replace your safeguarding, duty of candour or HR procedures.

Certification and Validity

On completion, learners receive a CPD Assessed Certificate of Achievement in Complaint Handling Awareness.

There is no formal expiry. We recommend a refresher every 1 to 3 years, or sooner if your complaints policy changes, a complaint or inspection shows a gap, or someone moves into a role where they respond to complaints.

Why Organisations Book With Prima Cura

Most training providers arrive with a course. We arrive with yours.

Before the day, we ask about your service: who you support, how your complaints policy works, who responds to what, and any complaints, compliments or inspection feedback from the last year. On the day, your trainer builds that into the scenarios. If your carers work alone in people’s homes, we practise handling a complaint on the doorstep with no senior to call on. If you run a care home, we work through the conversations that happen at visiting time and on the phone.

It means the training lands, because it’s about the people in the room and the situations they’ll actually meet.

A few other things that matter to the organisations that book with us:

• 98.9% of learners rated their training good or excellent. Our statistics are updated every six months, in January and July.
• All trainers hold Enhanced DBS certificates and maintain ongoing CPD
• We advise honestly at the enquiry stage. If a different course is a better fit for your team, we’ll say so before you book, not after

We respond to all enquiries within one working day.

Where We Deliver

We deliver in-house training at your workplace or chosen venue, so your team learns in the setting where they actually work.

Greater Manchester and the North West is home. We deliver across Greater Manchester, including Manchester city centre, Salford and Stockport, and across the wider North West. We also run care-specific training for care homes and residential services throughout the region.

Steph and our associate trainers cover London and the South East. In south-west London that includes Tooting, Balham and Teddington. In Surrey, where Steph is from, it includes Guildford, Farnham and Godalming.

Anywhere else in England, our associate trainers can come to you. Live online delivery via Zoom or Microsoft Teams is also available if your team is spread across several sites.

All sessions are led by either Steph or one of our associate trainers. Groups are capped at 12 per trainer to protect the quality of learning.

You can meet the team on our Associates page.

FAQs

Related Courses

• Communication in Care
• Duty of Care
• Adult Safeguarding Level 1 & 2
• Dignity in Care
• Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
• Person-Centred Care and Planning
• Reporting, Record Keeping and Information Governance in Care
• Effective Supervision and Appraisal in Care

Book or Enquire

Book your training or request a quote

Tell us your team size and your sector. We’ll come back with a quote, the right advice on qualification level, and a straight answer on whether this is the best course for your team.

We respond to all enquiries within one working day.

Our Commitment to Quality and Compliance

At Prima Cura Training, every course reflects current UK guidance and good practice. All trainers are experienced professionals with relevant qualifications and ongoing CPD, and because many of the organisations we support work with vulnerable people, all trainers hold Enhanced DBS checks.

This course is reviewed against updates from the Care Quality Commission, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, Skills for Care and Acas, and current legislation, including the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 and the Equality Act 2010.

You can read more on our Quality Assurance and Compliance page.

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Reviewed by Stephanie Austin, Owner and Lead Trainer, Prima Cura Training 25+ years in health and social care | 15+ years as a trainer

This page is for general guidance only and reflects UK legislation, CQC guidance and Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman guidance as at the date of review. It is not legal advice. This course supports good complaint handling in care settings. It does not replace your complaints policy, safeguarding procedures, duty of candour process or HR procedures, and providers remain responsible for meeting CQC Regulation 16 and their other legal duties. If someone is in immediate danger, call 999. Quarterdeck is an independent organisation, and Prima Cura Training is not responsible for services it provides.

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