Unacceptable behaviour policy

What is classed as Unacceptable Behaviour

Unacceptable behaviour means acting in a way that is unreasonable, regardless of the level of someone’s stress, frustration or anger. It may involve acts, words or physical gestures that could cause another person distress or discomfort.

Aggressive or Abusive Behaviour

This is behaviour (written or spoken) that could cause our staff or volunteers to feel afraid, threatened or abused. This includes threatening emails, telephone calls, meetings and comments on social media or elsewhere.

For example:

• Insulting or degrading language, including inappropriate banter, innuendo or malicious allegations
• Raised voice or shouting
• Threats to cause damage to Citizens Advice property
• Swearing
• Any form of physical violence or threats of physical violence
• Discrimination like racism, sexism, ageism or homophobia
• Comments relating to disability, perceived gender, religion, belief or any other personal characteristic.
• Unreasonable Demands

We’ll also tell you if you’re taking up an unreasonable amount of time as this could stop us helping other people for example if you:

• Keep demanding things in a short amount of time
• Ask to speak to a specific member of staff/volunteer when it’s not possible, or contact lots of staff/volunteers to try and get a different outcome
• Keep changing issues or raising unrelated ones
• Demand help for something outside of our advice areas
• Keep raising the same issue when we’ve already helped you or we can’t help more
• Ask for sensitive or confidential information we aren’t allowed to share
• Make lots of complaints without giving us the chance to resolve them, or make an unreasonable number of data protection requests

What we’ll do if your behaviour is unacceptable

We will keep a record of all incidents of unacceptable behaviour experienced by our staff and volunteers.

We’ll give you an opportunity to change your behaviour, but if you continue we might:

• End the conversation
• Limit how much time we spend on the phone with you
• Stop helping you face to face and only help you by phone or email
• Not reply to all your communications
• Send letters and documents back to you
• Only help you with certain situations

In very serious situations we might:

• Stop helping you completely
• Call the police

If we decide to stop helping you

If we decide to stop helping you it means you cannot access Citizens Advice Liverpool servicesso we might not respond to any contact from you.

We’ll give you a chance to change your behaviour before we stop helping you – unless your behaviour threatens the safety of our staff, volunteers or other people.

We’ll always try to tell you why we have stopped helping you.

If you think our decision is unfair

If Citizens Advice Liverpool decides to stop helping you, you can appeal to the chair of trustees by emailing complaints@caliverpool.org.uk