Incident reponse

Question 1

People first

Answer 1

The priority should be to give practical support to help the people directly involved and their parents/guardians. This might be providing information and updates, or help getting parents/guardians to the hospital. Try and consider what you would want if you were in their position, and be proactive in organising things like taking belongings to the hospital, providing magazines, etc.

Question 2

Escalate

Answer 2

The incident should be managed at a senior level as soon as possible. To ensure this happens, you need to follow your organisation’s initial reporting system and let your manager know about the incident as soon as possible. The NCS reporting protocols are discussed in more detail later in this course.

Question 3

Take ownership

Answer 3

If an incident has happened while people were in your organisation’s care, your organisation should take ownership of managing the incident and not seek to blame other organisations, such as the community hall in the car wash case study.

Question 4

Do the right thing

Answer 4

Your organisation should make any response decisions on ethical and legal grounds, rather than, for example, being focused on commercial aspects or being tempted to ‘hide’ bad news. If this sort of behaviour comes out (which it often does!) it will make it more difficult for the organisation to portray its normal caring side trying to do the best in a difficult situation.

Question 5

Be available

Answer 5

Those who need information need to be able to get it, if necessary by speaking to management. A single point of contact at the right management level for the families of those affected would be a start. But other external ‘stakeholders’, including the press, should also be able to access information in a professional manner without undue delay. The more information you provide your managers, the better they will be able to respond to all of this.

Question 6

The future

Answer 6

However serious the incident, someone in your organisation will also be focusing on managing other day-to-day matters. Although this won’t be your focus, any support you can give them in this will be useful.