10. The welfare of staff and inappropriate and disruptive behaviour

We take the welfare of staff seriously and will make all reasonable efforts to protect them from potential harm. Sometimes we receive offensive material and comments or face inappropriate or disruptive behaviour. Various policies address how we will respond to this:

• Health, safety and wellbeing 
• Guidance on offensive remarks, and suggested ways to deal with difficult calls, included in Managing challenging complainant behaviour 
• LGSCO Alerts 
• Blocking emails policy 

The circumstances in which we might choose to end an investigation because of a complainant’s behaviour can be found here.

Telephone calls with complainants can sometimes be very difficult, perhaps because of the complexity or sensitivity of the complaint or because of the complainant’s behaviour. Sometimes we get complaints about what we said on the telephone or that we terminated difficult calls. A note of any such call should be made as soon as practicable, setting out why the call became difficult, what key points the complainant was making and the Investigator’s response. Incoming and outgoing telephone calls are routinely recorded. Recordings are retained for 30 days. Investigators involved in a difficult call should request a copy of it by making an IT Helpdesk request and add it to the ECHO file or, if it is too large, to the K:\Casework drive.

We should not terminate a call merely because the complainant is or says they are recording it.