The Serious Incident Response Scheme (SIRS) started in residential aged care on 1 April 2021.
It extended to home care and flexible care delivered in a home or community setting on 1 December 2022. This includes providers of:
- Home Care Packages (HCP)
- Short-Term Restorative Care at home
- Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP)
- National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Flexible Aged Care (NATSIFAC)
- Multi-Purpose Services Programs
- Transition Care Program services.
The SIRS sets out arrangements for managing incidents and taking reasonable action to prevent them. It focuses on the safety, health wellbeing and quality of life of people who use aged care.
Key components of the SIRS
Incident management obligations
Incident management is vital to the delivery of safe and quality care.
Aged care providers must have an effective incident management system (IMS) in place. You must use this to continuously improve how you manage and prevent incidents.
As a worker, you must be aware of your obligations to report all incidents to the appropriate staff member. This ensures the recording of incidents in the IMS.
Visit our Incident management resources page for more information.
Reportable incident obligations
Providers must notify us when reportable incidents occur.
There are 8 types of reportable incidents involving people using aged care that must be reported to us.
If an incident is of a criminal nature, it must be reported to the police.
Reporting timeframes depend on:
- the type of reportable incident
- the level of injury and/or discomfort to the person in care
- whether you need to report the incident to the police.
The reportable incident requirements will depend on the aged care setting. For more information, visit our SIRS in residential aged care page or SIRS in home services page.
Reporting to the police
Providers must report an incident to the police where there are reasonable grounds to do so.
This includes when they're aware of facts or circumstances that led to a belief that an incident is unlawful or considered to be of a criminal nature (for example, sexual assault).
Providers must report an incident to police within 24 hours of becoming aware of it happening.
They should report criminal conduct to police, regardless of whether an incident is alleged or suspected to have occurred.
If there's any doubt about whether an incident is of a criminal nature, a report to the police should still be made. They can investigate and identify whether an incident involves criminal conduct.
Incidents may need to be reported to others, such as the Coroner, for example. Staff are responsible for reporting incidents to their supervisors. The supervisor must then ensure that the right reporting occurs.
How to report an incident
Aged care providers can lodge reportable incidents by logging into the My Aged Care Service and Support portal and selecting the SIRS Notice tile.
Staff must understand their roles and responsibilities for submitting notifications. Any staff responsible for notifying reportable incidents must understand how to access and use the My Aged Care Service and Support portal.
For information about using the portal, visit the Department of Health and Aged Care website.
