The coronavirus (Covid-19) situation is causing enormous disruption and a great deal of anxiety across the country and in all sectors. The challenges facing providers, current and future students, and student representative bodies are profound and the impact is likely to be long-lasting.
We have adapted our approach to our work to take account of the new realities we are all facing. We want to help providers and students to navigate their way through this situation. We are being very flexible with our processes and realistic in our expectations.
We ourselves are open for business with our people working from home in line with government guidance. Our case-handlers and support teams are fully equipped to do this, including to take phone calls. Please contact us by email or phone wherever possible rather than by post, as our ability to send and receive post is currently limited.
If you have an open complaint with us and are finding it difficult to engage with our process (for example, if it is difficult to meet our deadlines) do please get in touch with us. We ask any providers that are experiencing significant difficulties with their complaints-handling capacity to please let us know.
While we have had to cancel the face-to-face events we had planned for the next couple of months, we have a lot of good practice resources on our website and already deliver a lot of our outreach virtually through webinars, “on demand” content and virtual visits. Please check our outreach pages for updates.
We understand that this is a worrying time for students and staff in providers, and that there is inevitably considerable disruption to students’ studies. As well as information about our approach to our work, we have published some information for students, and a briefing note for providers which includes information on some things it may be helpful to think about in terms of possible complaints arising from the coronavirus situation.
The health and wellbeing of our colleagues and everyone who uses our service is our top priority and we will continue to monitor the situation carefully.