Our responsibilities

• What we do
• Our jurisdiction
• Our functions

What we do

The NSW Ombudsman helps agencies within our jurisdiction to address problems with their performance. These problems may be uncovered by complaints from members of the public or by people who work for those agencies. They may also come to our attention through our work in scrutinising agency systems, overseeing investigations or reviewing the delivery of services.

Our focus is on improving the conduct and decision-making of those agencies. We use our experience and knowledge to make sure they are aware of their responsibilities to the public and act reasonably as well as lawfully. Traditionally we have done this by responding to complaints made to us and recommending action for the agency to take to resolve each complaint.

Over the years we have become more proactive in our approach. We investigate the more serious matters ourselves, but in many cases we encourage agencies and complainants to deal with each other directly and find a mutually satisfactory outcome.

One of our key messages is that complaints are one of the best sources of feedback on how an agency is performing. We encourage and help agencies to set up and maintain effective complaint handling systems to better handle complaints about themselves and use the feedback to improve the way they do things. We provide training and have developed resources on topics such as how to deal with difficult complainants and how to investigate complaints.

We will often refer complaints we receive back to the agency concerned and give them support to handle the complaint themselves. We will directly oversee the investigation of more serious matters. We also scrutinise the systems that agencies have to deal with complaints and recommend improvements.

We also have specific functions relating to the protection of children in NSW, the delivery of community services, the causes and patterns of deaths of certain children and people with a disability in care, agency decisions on freedom of information applications, the use of powers to conduct controlled operations, and the operation of a number of new pieces of legislation conferring additional powers on police.

 

Our jurisdiction

The NSW Ombudsman has jurisdiction over the following agencies and the people who work for them:

• NSW public sector agencies including government departments, statutory authorities, boards, area health services and the police.
• Local and county councils.
• Some private sector agencies and individuals who provide public services such as the operators of Junee correctional centre, private certifiers who sometimes perform certain local council functions and accreditation bodies for those private certifiers.
• Public and private sector agencies providing services for children including government and non-government schools, child care centres and agencies providing substitute residential care.
• Agencies providing community services who are funded, licensed or authorised by the Department of Community Services, the Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care, the Minister for Community Services or the Minister for Ageing and Disability Services, including licensed boarding houses and fee-for-service agencies.

 

Our functions

The main functions of the NSW Ombudsman are to:

• Deal with complaints –public sector agencies, local councils, police, community service providers, workplace child protection issues, correctional centres, freedom of information, protected disclosures
• Oversee and monitor investigations by agencies
• Scrutinise systems – police, community services, workplace child protection issues,
• Hear appeals on witness protection issues
• Review the situation of people in care
• Monitor and review community services
• Review reviewable deaths
• Review the implementation of legislation
• Provide information and advice
• Coordinate the Official Visitors program.