Notifying a serious incident

We understand that incidents of a serious nature sometimes occur in early childhood education and care settings. Timely, accurate and well documented serious incident notifications facilitate critical reflection, thereby enabling services to identify areas for improvement. 

Using a serious incident as a continuous improvement opportunity

As an approved provider, it is expected that any serious incident is used for critical reflection. Notifying an incident is a legal obligation, it is for the Education Standards Board to ensure that you have assessed the risks and responded appropriately. You can use your Quality Improvement Plan (QIP) to record incident reflections and mitigations strategies.

Questions for critical reflection include: 

1. How can you prevent a serious incident occurring again?
2. What have you learned from this incident that can help you move towards better quality practice?

We encourage services that have not reported to the Education Standards Board for a long time to reflect on their incident reporting policies and procedures to ensure that reporting obligations are being met. It is better to err on the side of caution and report an incident rather than not report. 

Serious incidents should be reported as soon as practical, and within 24 hours of the incident. If it is not apparent in the first instance that an incident is serious, the notification must be made within 24 hours of a service becoming aware of the serious nature of the incident. 

Required information for a serious incident notification

Notifications are made through the NQA IT system. All notifications should be completed with all relevant details. Be sure to complete each section on the form with detailed, factual information about each child involved. This will reduce the need for us to contact you for further information and allows incidents to be correctly assessed. 

How you respond, how detailed your notification is and how effective your risk mitigation strategies are will assist us to determine current risk and whether any action is needed.

1. Child’s details

You must include the following information about the child involved:

1. First and last name
2. Date of birth
3. Contact details for the child’s parent or guardian
4. Type of injury.

2. Information about the incident

A notification must include details about the serious incident, including:

1. How the incident occurred
2. Where the incident occurred
3. Who was involved – first and last names of other children or educators involved in the incident.

3. Notifying the parent or guardian

When a serious incident occurs, you are obligated under the National Law to notify the parent or guardian within 24 hours. 

The serious incident notification must include details of how the parent or guardian was notified of the incident.

4. Action to minimise future risk

A complete notification must contain the steps that were taken, or will be taken, to prevent or minimise a similar serious incident in the future.

Resources for services and providers

You can find a full list of serious incidents and notification timeframes on page 460 of the Guide to the NQF.

Notification types and timeframes (ACECQA)

Reporting requirements about children

Incident, injury, trauma and illness record template –  an example of a template that can be used to document supporting evidence for a serious incident notification or other (non-serious) incidents.

Emergency management help guide – example 2 shows where to notify an incident via your NQA IT System.