Policy Statements

Customer Care Policy

The Lively Tiger Chen Style Tai Chi School is committed to the principle of continuous service improvement in order to satisfy and wherever possible exceed customer expectations.

This customer care commitment will be sustained through:

An acceptance of the need for continuous improvement.
A commitment to listen and respond positively to students and customers.
Regular review and improvement.
A commitment to learning from others.
Stating my name when answering telephone calls.
Identifying myself by name, organisation and position when answering emails and letters.
Ensuring that all correspondence is acknowledged within 5 working days followed promptly by a full reply.
Publishing details of all session fees on the website.
Providing support information on the website.
Providing a responsive and unbiased complaints procedure that will be processed within clearly defined time parameters; all complaints will be acknowledged within 5 working days and the complainant informed of the decision/outcome within 28 calendar days.

Equal Opportunities Policy

Lively Tiger Chen Style Tai Chi School is committed to Equal Opportunities and Anti-discrimination by taking positive action to:

Promote practices and procedures that give Equal Opportunities to everybody who wish to practice Tai Chi.
Monitor all materials produced by the Lively Tiger Chen Style Tai Chi School to ensure that they are free from bias.
Promote the principles of diversity and accessibility.
Monitor and review the policy on a regular basis, taking into account all changes to current legislation.

The Equal Opportunities Policy will be implemented by:

Promoting the policy on the website and making it readily available to anyone who requires it.
Monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of the policy through continuous improvement.

Safeguarding Children Policy

Lively Tiger Chen Style Tai Chi School fully recognises its responsibilities for child protection. For the purposes of these policies and procedure children are any person under the age of 18 years, or those whom are considered vulnerable.

We will endeavour to safeguard children by:

· Adopting child protection policies and guidelines through a code of behaviour for staff and volunteers.

· Sharing information about concerns with agencies who need to know, and involving parents and children appropriately.

Ensuring that all staff and volunteers with responsibility for children are checked in accordance with the Criminal Record Bureau guidelines.
Making all new staff and volunteers aware of the child protection procedures and policies.
Establishing a safe environment in which children can learn and develop.
Reviewing this policy and good practice at regular intervals.

Code of Behaviour

Staff and volunteers must respect children's rights to privacy and encourage children and adults to feel comfortable enough to report attitudes or behaviour they do not like.
Staff and volunteers must refrain from consuming alcohol for a period of at least 12 hours prior to assuming responsibility for any child or children.
If a member of staff or volunteer finds himself or herself the subject of inappropriate affection or attention from a child, they should make others aware of this.

Do not:

Spend excessive amounts of time alone with children, away from others. If privacy is needed, the door should remain open and other staff or volunteers should be aware of the meeting.
Make unnecessary physical contact with children. However, there may be occasions when physical contact is unavoidable, such as providing comfort at times of distress, first aid or physical support or correction during training. In all such cases contact should only take place with the consent of the child.
Take children alone in a car, however short the journey. Where this is unavoidable, it should be with the full knowledge and consent of the parents (or guardians).
Initiate or engage in sexually provocative conversations or activity.
Allow the use of inappropriate language to go unchallenged.
Show favouritism to any one child.
Issue or threaten any form of physical punishment.

Complaints Procedure

To help improve customer service, your comments are always welcomed. If your are in anyway dissatisfied with the service provided please put your concerns in writing to enable the issues that you raise to be fully addressed:

All correspondence will be acknowledged within 5 working days.
A letter will be sent to the complainant, within 28 calendar days of receiving the complaint, with the result of the review and any actions that have been instigated in response to the complaint.