Amaze Customer Charter

Our Customer Charter outlines Amaze’s commitment to providing high quality information, advice, and support services to our community. It serves as a guiding document that defines our values, standards of service, and the rights and responsibilities of the parent carers and children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) that we serve.  

By establishing clear expectations, we aim to be transparent, build trust, and ensure that all interactions with Amaze are respectful, responsive, and empowering. The scope of this charter encompasses all aspects of our services, from the initial point of contact through to the delivery of ongoing support, ensuring that individuals receive timely, relevant, and quality services, tailored to their needs.  

Through this charter, we reiterate our commitment to continuous improvement and feedback, encouraging the families we support to share their experiences, to help us enhance what we do and the impact it has. 

The charter is published here on our website, and as a downloadable document, and shared widely, with paper copies being available at Amaze events and on noticeboards in the Amaze offices. 

We want to ensure that everyone who uses Amaze’s information advice and support services has a positive experience.  In addition to our values, we commit to our service users that: 

• We provide a polite, friendly, helpful and professional service. We treat people fairly, with courtesy and respect.  This means that we do not judge anyone or tell them what to do, nor do we treat one person more favourably than another. We are open, honest and consistent.   
• We listen to and empower parent carers and children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities, enabling them to take control. 
• Parent carers and young people are invited to participate in Amaze’s co-production activities, giving them a real say in the development of our services and informing how we work with other organisations providing SEND services locally. 
• We treat parent carer and children and young people’s personal and confidential information with sensitivity. We collect, store and use personal and confidential information responsibly with consent. Please note that in some circumstances where we consider someone to be at risk of harm, we may be required to release information without consent. We explain this in our Privacy Policy 
• We provide a parent carer or young people with access to the personal data we hold about them, when requested, in line with GDPR. 
• We work within appropriate legislation and the guidelines we set out in our policies and procedures which hold us to good practice in all areas. 
• We ensure that Amaze-produced information is evidence-based, accurate, up-to-date and conforms to quality standards, such as those set out by the Information, Advice and Support Service Network (IASSN) for SENDIASS providers and the Advice Quality Standard (AQS). 
• We are inclusive of diverse communities and provide accessible information, advice and support, where resources allow: 
  • • in the format or language that best suits people’s needs 
    • in premises and facilities which are accessible to disabled people 
    • by making reasonable adjustments which empower disabled people to access our support 
• Our staff and volunteers have the right support and training they need to: 
  • • provide high quality, person-centred, timely and accurate information, advice and support 
    • keep personal data secure 
    • keep children, young people and adults at risk safe from harm 
    • be inclusive in their practice 
• We ensure that our staff and volunteers have appropriate checks performed by the Disclosure and Barring Service and at relevant intervals. 
• Amaze has a range of services that we can offer.  We ensure that we do not overreach the limits of our own knowledge, expertise and delivery scope when dealing with enquiries.  On those occasions when enquiries come to us which we cannot deal with then we will signpost or refer to other services. 
• We give everyone as much time as they need and encourage families to come back into Amaze for information, advice and support as and when they need us.  This means there may be a wait before speaking to one of our advisers or accessing a service, but we explain this and keep people informed of any waiting times.   
• Our SENDIASS Advice Line provides information and guidance and our advisers are trained in IPSEA SEN law levels 1-3, but the service does not provide legal advice.   

We are committed to providing excellent services and working in an open and accountable way that builds trust and respect within our community.  We value the opinions and views of people using Amaze and welcome and encourage feedback, both good and bad, in any format. We are committed to using this feedback to review and improve what we do and how we do it. It helps us to appreciate the things we are good at and to work out what still needs to improve. 

• We routinely ask for feedback when a service has been provided and in different ways, e.g. via a survey, on the phone or in person. 

• Anyone can comment on our services via this feedback form on our website 

• Our complaints policy explains the process we follow when anyone wants to complain about a service they have received or any aspect of our work. 

• We ask that people behave in a way which is sensitive and respectful of the needs of other families and our team.  

• We ask that people help us to understand their needs so that we can give the best possible service.  This includes being as open as possible in their enquiry or when asked for further information, so we can provide the most accurate advice and support available. People should also tell us if there are changes that we should know about, for example, changes to their contact details. 

• We try to contact parent carers and young people three times, where possible using different methods i.e. email, phone, text, leaving messages.  If we don’t hear back after three attempts, then we will close an enquiry.  Anyone is welcome to come back to us at any time to resume contact. 

• We ask that people attend appointments and events they book with us or let us know in good time when this is impossible. But we recognise the challenges and complications of our users’ lives and will not take a failure to attend to mean that someone does not want or need our service.  However, should an individual or family consistently not attend booked appointments, we may open a conversation with them about the way that we can best support them whilst also making sure we maximise the availability of our resources for all families who might need help.  

• We require that parent carers and young people who join groups, activities, events, workshops and social media channels follow the group agreement for that group or event or social media channel to ensure we can offer a safe and welcoming environment for all. 

• If behaviour is unreasonable or breaks a group agreement, we discuss this with an individual and we may ask them to change the method by which they engage with Amaze, to leave a specific activity or group.  In some circumstances, we may make the decision to stop working with them for a period or indefinitely: this is always an option of ‘last resort’ and is only used in situations where there has been a careful assessment that there is considerable risk of harm to either the service user or to others, including other attendees or Amaze staff and volunteers.  

This policy is available to the public on our website, for staff in the policies folder and hard copies are available on request. New staff and volunteers are made aware of the policy during their induction. Training is available on request. Reminders are given at staff meetings. 

You can download a copy of Amaze Customer Charter 2026 (pdf 225kb)