Aged care providers should make people feel safe and confident about the quality of care.
The Serious Incident Response Scheme (SIRS) aims to reduce abuse and neglect among people receiving aged care.
Under the SIRS, providers must:
- manage and prevent incidents
- apply learnings from incidents to drive continuous improvement
- tell us about reportable incidents
- report incidents to the police where appropriate.
Manager responsibilities
Managers of aged care services must:
- have an effective Incident Management System (IMS) in place
- train their staff to use the IMS
- record incidents using the IMS
- report incidents to external bodies when needed
- act on incident reports to improve safety.
Worker responsibilities
Aged care workers deal directly with older people. As a result, they must:
- understand how the IMS works
- ensure everybody is safe when an incident happens
- record incidents using the IMS
- report incidents to external bodies when needed.
Preparing for incidents
- About the SIRS: learn about the 3 major SIRS components
- Incident management systems: find out what makes an effective IMS
- Safety cultures: create an environment that prevents incidents.
Recording, reporting and responding
- Incident response: explore incident response plans
- Recording the incident: find out about managing incident reports and records
- Reportable incidents: learn about different types of reportable incidents and when to contact the police.
Continuous improvement
- Analysing the incident: learn how to assess incident data and identify solutions
- Implementing actions: create an effective action plan
- Closing the loop: share outcomes and lessons.
Please note: this page provides general guidance only. It's your responsibility to be aware of legislative requirements.
