"Really engaging, respectful and accessible workshop for our deaf community. If only more organisations were as aware of the importance of equal access as you are. Thank you all!" — Online participant, Empowering Deaf Society
When my colleague Chloe and I were asked to deliver our Complaint Champions workshop to a deaf audience, we were apprehensive. Neither of us can communicate in British Sign Language (BSL), and we take great pride in our work — we wanted to make sure our deaf participants took away as much information as anyone else. What followed gave us both a lot to think about and marked the beginning of one of the most rewarding strands of our outreach work.
Our Outreach and Public Engagement team
One of the main duties of the Outreach and Public Engagement team is delivering activities to raise awareness of our service. Over the past 12 months, we have met with lots of groups and charities that support disabled service users. We have hosted roundtables for the Ombudsman and our Chief Executive to meet with senior leaders from such organisations. As an officer, one of my main outreach tasks is to deliver our Complaint Champions workshop to the staff who support people who may want to bring a complaint to us.
Complaint Champions workshops
The idea behind the Complaint Champions workshop is to empower participants to help their service users or clients navigate the complaints landscape. In the workshop, we explain:
- what an Ombudsman does
- how to find the right Ombudsman for your complaint
- what our organisation can and cannot investigate
- the journey of a complaint at our organisation, from calling us to publishing our final decisions.
Usually, we deliver our workshop on Microsoft Teams. The benefit of an online approach is that people can dial in from anywhere, whether sitting in an office in Newcastle or at a kitchen table in Cornwall. We can connect with charities and advocacy services to give them a better understanding of the complaints process and practical tips to support someone with their complaint. Where an organisation wants ten or more of their staff to attend, we can create a bespoke version of the workshop just for them.
Online workshops are not the only way to reach people and they are not always the most effective way to share information. One of the organisations that our team engaged with in 2025 was the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID). RNID asked if we could deliver an in-person session, to allow participants to meet us and make it easier to communicate. We held the workshop in Stratford, as part of our East London Roadshow in September 2025. Along with staff from RNID, we were joined by some of their partner organisations from across the southeast of England and the session was very well-received.
We held a second in-person workshop in our Manchester office in November 2025, so that some of RNID's northern-based partners could attend. We tailored both workshops specifically for the audience. We arranged for two BSL interpreters to attend and we used examples of real complaints in the workshop that had previously been submitted to us by deaf people.
The BSL interpreters did an incredible job, and our participants were fully engaged throughout. Attendees asked lots of questions and shared their experiences about accessing public services as a deaf person. In particular, we heard how difficult it can be for deaf people to access BSL interpretation for primary health care appointments. Those conversations shaped how we thought about our work and gave us the confidence to keep going.
'The workshops we have delivered to RNID are a great opportunity for us to explain the complaints landscape and upskill these organisations and groups who directly support deaf service users. It's always exciting delivering these workshops. I've enjoyed the chance to look at our workshop content in a different way, considering how we could adapt the activities to suit different audiences and break down any terms or jargon.' - Chloe Salins, Outreach and Public Engagement Officer and co-creator of the Complaint Champions workshop
Expanding our reach
The success of the RNID workshops gave us the confidence to deliver more BSL-interpreted workshops to the Deaf community. Shortly before Christmas we welcomed the staff of Sign Health, a charity that delivers services as wide-ranging as domestic abuse support, therapy and advocacy services to deaf people across the country.
'Many thanks for this information and for hosting us yesterday. It was a really useful session for us, we learnt a lot and hopefully we gave you a lot to consider too.' — Head of Policy, Sign Health
Last month we delivered our first online workshop to a deaf organisation, Empowering Deaf Society. While it is more challenging to deliver a workshop online to a deaf audience, we were still able to share all the information and the attendees asked lots of questions.
As our organisation looks to publish our next corporate strategy in the coming months, our team will continue to explore ways to deepen our relationships with advocacy groups and advice organisations to raise awareness of our service among those who need it.
Get involved
If you are an advocate, or you work for an organisation in the Voluntary, Charity, and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector, we'd love to have you join one of our workshops. Here's how to get involved.
- We deliver Complaint Champions workshops twice a month online. If you would like to reserve a place, please visit our Eventbrite page and select a date.
- We can also provide a bespoke, closed session for organisations with more than ten attendees. If you are interested in this, please contact us at public.engagement@ombudsman.org.uk.