Listening to People
The NHS in Wales aims to provide the very best care and treatment, but sometimes things may not go as well as expected. When that happens, you should raise your concerns with the staff involved with your care or treatment so that they can look at what may have gone wrong and try to make it better. In NHS Wales, this is done through a process known as Listening to People.
What is the Listening to People process?
Listening to People is the national approach for handling complaints, incidents and redress in NHS Wales. It aims to make it easy for you to share your experiences, ensuring you are treated with dignity, fairness, compassion and respect at every step.
How to raise your complaint
If you have a complaint regarding a recent experience of the Welsh Ambulance Service, we can receive and register your concern in a number of ways best suited to you.
Email the team: amb_WASTListeningtopeople@wales.nhs.uk
Call the team direct: 0300 321 321 1
Please do not call this number if you need medical advice. For urgent healthcare advice, call 111 or call 999 in a serious medical emergency.
This phone line is monitored between 9.00am and 4.30pm, Monday to Friday. A member of our team will contact you within five working days.
Complete the online form: Online Concerns Submission Form
If you have been involved in a road traffic incident or had damage to property by a Trust vehicle, please visit: Damage to Property.
What we will need from you
When raising your concern, we will ask a series of questions to enable us to gather the correct information required in order to investigate your concern accurately. The information we will require in the first instance is:
You should try and raise your complaint as soon as possible following an incident, but we understand that this may not always be possible. You can raise your complaint up to 12 months after the date of the incident.
What to expect from us
Assistance with your complaint
If you prefer, a friend, family member or carer can represent you and raise the concern on your behalf. We will, however, require your permission to agree to this and will require your written consent.
Llais, the independent statutory body set up by Welsh Government to give the people of Wales more say in the planning and delivery of their health and social care services, can also provide you with free confidential help and advice if you have a problem or concern with NHS services. Visit the Llais website for more information.
Each Local Health Board and Trust in Wales has its own concerns team, details of which can be found here.
What happens next?
After raising your concern, it will be registered by our Listening to People administration team, who will acknowledge your concern within five working days. This may be by phone, email or in writing, depending on how you would prefer this communication. We may contact you if we need any further information about your concern, to identify how much you wish to be involved, or with any information we have found.
We aim to provide a final response within 30 working days of the concern being raised, however, in very complex cases or where significant harm has been caused, we may take up to 120 days. If this is the case, we will contact you to explain and agree how quickly we will be able to respond. If we cannot reply to you within that time, we will make contact to update you and let you know why.
In some cases, further investigations may be needed and may require your consent to access medical records held by a Local Health Board or your GP and is taken forward under the redress arrangements. We will contact you to update of these developments and to request any further information or access to records as required.
Concern conclusion
We will contact you with our formal response at the conclusion of the investigation, either by letter, email or other preferred method of contact identified by yourself. If you are unhappy with the investigation or response to your concern, it may be possible to resolve this by meeting with the Trust to discuss your concerns. This often proves a very positive and effective way of reaching a satisfactory outcome for everyone involved.
If you remain unhappy about the response to your concerns, you can contact the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales. The Public Service Ombudsman is independent to the NHS and offers a free, confidential service:
The Public Service Ombudsman for Wales
Tel: 0845 601 0987
Website: www.ombudsman-wales.org.uk/
Email: ask@ombudsman-wales.org.uk
Address: 1 Ffordd yr Hen Gae, Pencoed, Cardiff, CF35 5LJ
Useful Links and Contacts
Llais Cymru
Tel: 0845 6447814
Tel: 029 20 235558
Website: www.llaiswales.org
Email: enquiries@llaiscymru.org
Citizens Advice Bureau
Tel: 0844 477 2020
Website: www.adviceguide.org.uk/wales
Visit Welsh Government’s Listening to People page for more information on the Listening to People process.
Fair Processing Notice
The Welsh Ambulance Services University NHS Trust works in partnership with the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) by reporting patient safety incidents to the NPSA through the national Reporting and Learning System (RLS). Information is passed to the NPSA to enable it to learn from patient safety incidents and perform its functions relating to the ongoing management of health care services in England and Wales. The RLS operates on an anonymous basis; however, information which constitutes patients’, staff or visitors’ personal data may in some cases be passed to the NPSA. Where this is recognised, it will be deleted, as it is not the intention of the NPSA to hold person identifiable information.