What is an incident?
An incident is any event that has caused, or could reasonably have caused, harm, injury, loss or serious distress to a participant, staff member or other person. This includes near-misses where no one was hurt, but there was a real risk of harm.
Examples include (but are not limited to):
- injury, illness or medical emergencies during service delivery
- allegations of abuse, neglect or exploitation
- behaviour of concern that puts someone at risk
- property damage, environmental hazards or unsafe equipment
- medication errors or concerns about quality of care.
Who can report an incident?
Anyone can report an incident, including participants, family members, carers, staff, volunteers, visitors and other service providers. You do not need to be certain something is wrong – if you are worried, we want to hear from you.
How to report an incident
You can report an incident by:
- speaking directly with a staff member or manager
- calling our office during business hours
- emailing us with details of what happened
- using our feedback and complaints process if you prefer to put it in writing.
In an emergency, call 000 first, then contact us as soon as it is safe to do so.
What we do when an incident is reported
- We take immediate steps to make sure everyone is safe.
- We provide or arrange any urgent medical or other support that is needed.
- We record the incident in our internal reporting system.
- We notify relevant authorities and regulators where required.
- We investigate the incident to understand what happened and why.
- We put in place actions to reduce the chance of it happening again.
Your rights
When an incident occurs, you have the right to:
- be treated with dignity, respect and compassion
- be involved in decisions about how the incident is managed and followed up
- have a support person, carer or advocate involved if you choose
- provide feedback or make a complaint if you are unhappy with our response.
Privacy and information sharing
We handle all incident information in line with our Privacy Policy and the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. We only share information with other parties when it is necessary for your care, required to manage the incident, or when we are authorised or required by law to do so.