Incident Management Standards
Introduction
The Incident Management Standard helps us manage incidents that occur at Scouts Canada camps, properties, worksites, and all locations where our activities are conducted. At Scouts Canada, we believe all incidents are preventable and good hazard identification and risk management are a core life skill that all Scouters and youth should develop as part of their Scouting adventures. In Scouts Canada, an incident is not limited to personal safety, but describes any condition outside of the normal that has the potential to cause harm to people, property, the environment or our reputation. Accordingly, we define an incident as an event, or occurrence, that results in:
- Injury
- Significant illness
- Failure of youth protection
- Complaint / Scouter Discipline Management
- Environmental spill
- Regulatory non-compliance
- Property or asset damage
- Damage to our reputation
This Standard helps us:
- Reduce injuries and illnesses, environmental impacts, property and financial losses
- Improve our youth protection standards and risk controls
- Improve external relationships and protect our reputation
- Comply with regulations (e.g. water compliance)
- Identify systemic deficiencies
Our Standards
1. This Standard applies to all members, departments, properties, camps, functions, councils, youth, staff, volunteers, and those acting in support of Scouts Canada activities.
2. This Standard clearly defines how our members will:
- Respond to an incident
- Notify supervisors, regulatory agencies, internal and external stakeholders about an incident
- Review incidents and share information with Scouts Canada
- Implement continuous improvement
3. Incident management: A formal process is in place for identifying, reporting, documenting, reviewing, assessing, and tracking incidents. We will all use the same tools for incident documentation and tracking
4. Mandatory actions:
- Initial report and response
- All Scouts Canada members shall immediately report any incident to the responsible designated Scouter in Charge (as defined in the Adventure Standard). If in doubt – we report.
- This includes property and camp regulatory non-compliance.
- If an incident is determined to be an emergency, we will use the Emergency Preparedness and Response Standard and processes therein.
- If an incident is determined to be a youth protection concern then the designated Scouter will follow the Youth Protection Reporting Procedure.
- The designated Scouter in Charge, or delegate, shall use initial mitigations to address immediate risks and prevent escalation of the incident
- The designated Scouter in Charge will go to the next level of Commissioner, or delegate, and Safe Scouting (as appropriate) for support
- We will always use the ScoutSafe APP to report incidents, or if unavailable, the safety@scouts.ca email address.
- All Scouts Canada members shall immediately report any incident to the responsible designated Scouter in Charge (as defined in the Adventure Standard). If in doubt – we report.
- Communication
- We follow the Communications Standard for all incident communications
- Incident assessment
- We will review all incidents
- Safe Scouting will assign a lead to conduct the review with support from the appropriate individuals.
- The lead will be a qualified, impartial person whose seniority is consistent with the level of the incident
- The support will be qualified, impartial person(s) that can provide subject-matter expertise to the incident review
- We will follow established timeframes for starting and finishing all reviews
- The lead can get help from Council or National teams when necessary
- The lead is responsible for evidence collection and discussion with parties involved in the incident and emergency response
- The review team maintains the integrity and security of evidence
- Corrective actions
- We develop corrective actions for all findings from the incident review.
- We develop a plan and timeline to closeout all corrective actions
- Knowledge sharing
- We will communicate internally and externally what we learn from incidents as per the Communications Standard
- Tracking and improving performance
- National and Council leadership teams shall identify and work to solve systemic trends, using performance-improvement plans
- Training and competency
- We shall provide training to all personnel who manage incidents