Applicable to: Application Entities
Legislative Authority for Policy Directive: Section 7(2)3
Effective Date: October 1, 2020

Purpose

The purpose of this policy directive is to ensure that Application Entities have a provincially-consistent process in place to receive feedback about the services that they provide. This process is an important part of providing quality customer service and supports continuous improvement in service delivery.

This policy directive also requires that Application Entities provide applicants and their representatives of choice with the opportunity to provide confidential feedback to the ministry about their level of satisfaction with the Application Package.

As a provider of goods and services, each application entity with more than 20 employees was required to establish a feedback process on its customer service by January 1, 2012, to be in compliance with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 and O. Reg. 429/07.

This policy directive outlines additional requirements around the feedback process for Application Entities.

Policy

The application entity shall establish a feedback process to gather confidential feedback about services they provide and to address concerns raised in the feedback by applicants, persons previously determined to have developmental disabilities and/or representatives of their choice, staff and volunteers at the application entity, and by the general public, about the application entity and about its customer service.

Directive

Feedback about application entity services

The application entity shall develop and implement policies and procedures for gathering feedback and addressing concerns about its customer service in compliance with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 and O. Reg. 429/07.

The application entity shall also comply with the policies and procedures set out in O. Reg. 299/10 under the act on abuse prevention and reporting, and with the ministry process for reporting serious occurrences when a report is received in this regard.

The application entity shall conduct an annual review and analysis of feedback received and how concerns raised in the feedback were addressed and evaluate the effectiveness of its policies and procedures on the feedback process for the Board of Directors.

Feedback on the Application Package

The application entity shall provide applicants and/or representatives of their choice with the confidential ministry survey about the Application Package:

  • Implementation of this policy directive is based on the use of a ministry-specified survey tool and a common set of questions
  • Anonymous surveys shall be sent directly from the applicant to the administrator of the ministry’s survey tool (either electronically or in hard copy)
  • Only ministry corporate staff shall have access to the anonymous survey results and, where appropriate, results will be shared with the application entity