COOKIES POLICY

External complaint & concern reporting

RAD Assistance Dogs understands that there may be occasions when a business or member of the public has concerns about the welfare or behaviour of a dog they believe to be associated with our organisation. RAD does not provide dogs to our members and as such we have no legal liability or responsibility for dogs owned, trained, and handled by our members. The following information is intended to assist you in identifying a RAD member and their dog, and explains how you can report concerns to us and what action we will take.

Identification of RAD dogs:

The law does not require Assistance Dogs to be affiliated to any organisation or wear anything to identify them as an Assistance Dog, nor is there any obligation for the handler to carry or show any form of identification. RAD members join our organisation on a voluntary basis in order for their dog to achieve the highest standards of behaviour. A RAD trained Assistance Dog could be of any size or breed.

RAD vests are only issued to members when their dog has been assessed by our professional dog trainers to have reached a standard of behaviour which is suitable for them to further their training in public places where dogs do not usually have access.

To assist you in identifying a genuine RAD vest, please refer to the photograph below. RAD members can also request an identification badge which will include the name and description of their dog, although these are not mandatory.

 

What to do if you have a concern:

Please complete our web contact form describing your concern, date and time if relevant, a description of the dog and handler and any other relevant information you may have. Please ensure that you provide your contact details and those of any additional witnesses.

What we will do:

Upon receipt of a complaint or report we will endeavour to begin investigation of this within 5 working days. RAD is a small organisation whose staff work flexible and family-friendly hours, and therefore an immediate response may not always be possible.

Where we consider it relevant we will contact the person who has made the report and any other witnesses to gather information.

If we find there are grounds to do so, we will contact the member concerned if we are able to identify them from the information provided.

We will not be able to disclose any information about our members to the person making the report or complaint.

What we won’t do:

We are a charity with limited resources and we must use these in the best way possible. This means that there may be occasions when we chose not to investigate a complaint, or on rare occasions we may not respond to a complaint at all. These include:When a complaint is about something that RAD Assistance Dogs has no direct connection to. We may choose to reply to clear our name but we are not obliged to.

• When someone pursues a complaint that we have already responded to. In this event we will inform you of our decision. 
• When a complainant is being obviously abusive, prejudiced, or offensive in their manner.
• When a complainant is harassing a staff member.
• When a complaint is incoherent or illegible.
• When the passage of time between a reported incident and the report being made makes an effective investigation impossible or impractical.
• When a complaint has clearly been sent to us and numerous other organisations as part of a bulk mailing or email. In this instance we can chose whether it is necessary for us to reply or not.
• When a complaint is made anonymously this may limit our ability to investigate fully, but we will seek to use the information to improve in any way that we can.