Advice and complaints (PALS)

Contact the Patient Advice and Liaison Services (PALS)

Our PALS team are here to help when you need advice, have concerns or don’t know where to turn.

As a patient, relative or carer, sometimes you may need to turn to someone for help, advice and support – this is where PALS can help.

PALS is a confidential advice and support service that can help you sort out any concerns that you may have about any aspect of your or your loved one's care.

PALS can:

  • Listen to you and talk to staff on your behalf to try to resolve any concerns, issues, problems or difficulties

  • Provide information about the service we provide and about the NHS

  • Signpost you to other support organisations who can help

  • Listen to your suggestions and comments, provide support and take-action to improve our services

  • Learn from your positive experience and share compliments with those involved

  • Listen to your concerns, suggestions or queries

  • Help sort out problems quickly on your behalf.

We want to make it easy for you to talk to us so that we can understand your experience of our services, and identify where changes or improvements are needed, and try to put things right as quickly as possible. 

If you have a concern or comment the first step is to contact the person you know from the service you are using and tell them what the problem is. They can usually address any concerns you have quickly.

You can also ask a member of staff to get in touch with PALS on your behalf. Or you can approach us directly.

We can provide information and work with you to solve any problems you're having accessing or using our services.

We will listen and work with you to find the best solution to your problem. If we can't answer your questions or resolve your concern we will know someone who can.

We act independently when handling patient and family concerns, liaising with staff, managers and, where appropriate, relevant organisations, to get solutions as quickly as possible.

It's vital we're made aware of when things have gone well, so we can promote examples of good practice and share them with other teams and services. In any service, there is always scope for improvements. We welcome any comments, suggestions or compliments you may have to help us improve our services and keep doing the things that we're doing well. 

Complete the Sussex Experience Survey

The Sussex Experience Survey is quick and easy to complete as it just asks one question about your experience of using our services, with an option to provide further feedback if you want to. Complete the survey

If you would like to make a complaint about any aspect of your, or someone elses' care, please contact PALS. Unfortunately, sometimes things can go wrong. It is important that we know about this. This is so we can try to put things right, work with you, and stop the same thing from going wrong again in the future. 

Complete the Sussex Experience Survey

The Sussex Experience Survey is quick and easy to complete as it just asks one question about your experience of using our services, with an option to provide further feedback if you want to. Complete the survey

Call: 0300 304 2198

Email: spft.spft.pals@nhs.net

Address

Patient Advice and Liaison Service
Portland House
Richmond Road
Worthing
West Sussex
BN11 1HS

PALS are available Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. If there's no one available to take your call or it's outside of these hours, you can leave a confidential message and the team will contact you as soon as possible.