Building a Positive Complaints Culture for VMIAC

VMIAC (Victoria’s peak body for people living with mental illness) faced a clear problem: participants weren’t speaking up when things went wrong with their support providers. Not because issues didn’t exist, but because the complaints system felt too unclear and too risky to navigate.

Participants described being dismissed when they tried to raise concerns. Some had experienced breaches of confidentiality but were told they must have imagined it. Others struggled with knowing how to address poor service quality without turning it into a conflict.

VMIAC needed to empower participants to understand their rights and know exactly what to do when something goes wrong. But this wasn’t just a policy explainer job. It required building trust with an audience that had already experienced being dismissed, ignored, or gaslit when they tried to speak up.

We created a suite of four videos: three live-action pieces featuring real participants sharing their experiences, and one animated explainer walking viewers through the complaints process step by step.

The live-action films covered the participant journey: why people don’t speak up, what a positive response looks like, and what genuinely good support involves.

The animation handled the information architecture, stripping the complexity of registered vs unregistered providers, the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, and multiple complaint pathways back to clear steps in plain language.

Together, they cover the full journey from “I don’t know if I should say something” to “here’s what I’ll do next.” VMIAC’s video suite is now in use across their website, social channels, and events, reaching NDIS participants across Victoria and beyond.