Accreditation Complaints Procedure

The ASAB Accreditation Committee has a procedure for dealing with complaints and issues relating to conduct to enable us to investigate allegations of misconduct against anyone certified under its accreditation scheme. All our investigations are conducted in private and our members and CCABs must assist with our investigation process. There is no charge for our service.

This section describes:

what we can investigate
how to make a complaint
how we will deal with your complaint.

Can we investigate your complaint?

We can investigate your complaint if:

it is about a Clinical Animal Behaviourist certified under the accreditation scheme and it is about a conduct issue relating to their certification

We cannot investigate complaints about:

a Clinical Animal Behaviourist who is not accredited by ASAB
the matter does not relate to the specific conditions of the Clinical Animal Behaviourist's ASAB accreditation
any matter which is the subject of court proceedings

What is misconduct under the conditions of accreditation?

We publish a Code of Conduct which sets out certain standards of conduct with which our members are expected to comply. The Code is supplemented by other guidelines and statements of good practice by which Certified Clinical Animal Behaviourists are expected to abide.

Misconduct under the conditions of accreditation will occur if Certified Clinical Animal Behaviourists act outside the Code or guidelines and will include such things as:

failing to recognize the boundaries of their own competence
failing to maintain the confidentiality of information acquired through their professional practice
exploiting any relationship of trust or influence with a recipient of their services
conducting themselves in a way that damages the interests of recipients of their services
failing to obtain the consent of participants before undertaking investigations or interventions

How does one make a complaint?

All complaints must be in writing. You can use the form downloadable here or write a letter. If you have any documents or other evidence which support your complaint please send us copies of these in the first instance, but retain the originals, which may be required at a later date and will be returned to you.

Who deals with complaints?

Initially all complaints are considered by the Accreditation Committee, which includes the current ASAB President.

What happens next?

When the Committee receives a complaint, it will write to the subject of the complaint to seek their comments on the allegations which have been made.

Once it has received a response, the Committee will consider all the evidence to hand. It may recommend:

that further investigation is not required because there is no evidence of misconduct, or
that the Secretary undertakes further enquiries into the allegations on its behalf.
that it should write to the subject of the complaint to advise them that it has concerns about their conduct. The letter will set out the concerns and will remain as a permanent record on the CCAB's membership records, or
that a full hearing of the allegations of misconduct should take place.

What happens at Conduct hearings?

Our Conduct Subcommittee has power to take action against any Certified Clinical Animal Behaviourist within the scope of their terms of accreditation.

In addition to one or more clinical animal behaviourists, the Conduct Subcommittee includes "lay" representatives who will normally be members of Council of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour or invited nominees from other relevant professional bodies such as the British Psychological Society and the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons with experience of the disciplinary processes within their own profession.The Secretary of the Accreditation Committee will take the chair.

If a Conduct Subcommittee is invoked it is the Society, rather than you that acts as the complainant. We may ask you to attend the hearing as a witness, however. Hearings usually last one day.

The subject of the complaint may present his or her own case or be represented by a person of their choice. If the subject wishes to present their own case, they are entitled to be accompanied by another person during the hearing; however, while the accompanying person can liaise with the subject, they are not permitted to answer questions on the subject's behalf.

The Conduct Subcommittee will decide whether the Certified Clinical Animal Behaviourist is guilty of misconduct under the terms of their accreditation. The Committee shall be guided by the Code of Conduct but the mention or lack of mention in the Code of Conduct of a particular act or omission shall not be taken as conclusive on any question of conduct. In the event that it finds an individual guilty of misconduct the Conduct Committee may take one or more of the following courses of action:

reprimand or severely reprimand the Certified Clinical Animal Behaviourist;
require the Certified Clinical Animal Behaviourist to give written undertakings as deemed appropriate by the Committee, for a period not exceeding three years. The undertakings, which may include undertakings to refrain from continuing or repeating the offending conduct, may be reviewed no sooner than one year after they commence, by referral to a further Disciplinary Subcommittee hearing;
suspend the Certified Clinical Animal Behaviourist from the Register of Accreditation, the period of suspension to be determined by the Committee, but not to exceed three years, and to attach conditions to the suspension as and if deemed necessary by the Committee;
remove the Certified Clinical Animal Behaviourist from the Register.
place conditions upon the certification of the individual as deemed appropriate by the Committee. Those conditions may be appealed, removed or varied by way of a Committee hearing;
any breach of conditions imposed by a Conduct Committee will be referred to a further hearing of the Committee, where the Committee may remove, amend or replace the conditions with any penalty available to it.

The subject of the complaint has a right of appeal against any decision of the Conduct Committee. Details of the Appeals Procedure can be found here.

Further information

If after reading this you are unsure what to do next please contact the Accreditation Committee Secretary. He/she can advise you (or the subject of your complaint) about the complaints procedure at all stages of the process. They cannot advise on the particular merits of any complaint or potential complaints, however.