Council Member Wilson questions DHS on grievance tracking and follow-up
Wilson asks about standards for collecting grievances and repeated complaints against staff. Fellini describes the provider grievance process, appeals, 311, and DSS ombudsman tracking trends.
Chair, can I ask one more thing?
Thank you.
And also in terms of grievance reports and reporting, same sort of question.
Are there standards that DSS sets for how providers should be collecting and managing grievance reports?
And what happens when there's like multiple grievance reports for a particular one staff member or the same staff member?
Like, how do you how do you manage that?
Thank you for the question.
If you wouldn't mind giving me one moment.
And to the Commissioner's point earlier, we have procedures and we have protocols, and the grievance process is one of them.
It's a longstanding procedure, and as I believe Mr.
Denton, I hope I got his name right,
Thank you.
Testified, right?
I give the form to the person I might be having an issue with.
So that is the policy.
Clients do have the opportunity to essentially appeal the shelter's response to that.
And we do track those and may get involved.
Community members, clients, anyone can also report complaints or inquiries to us at DSS.
through 311.
They can come into one of our centers and make a complaint.
They can call us and make a complaint.
And all of that is gathered and analyzed.
So we're looking not just at individual complaints, we're looking at trends.
Is there a particular shelter?
Is someone named repeatedly?
Because then we're going to dig in.
We expect the shelter already has, but as program staff, we're also going to get the shelter director on the phone to say what's going on with this person.
And how can we help?
Because that's the other thing.