Incident reporting procedure for social care providers

If you provide adult health and social care services on behalf of Liverpool City Council you have a duty to deliver a safe, secure and appropriate service to meet the care and support needs of our service users.

If an incident takes place which compromises your ability to provide the contracted service, you must report it so that we can:

• Support the provider to resolve immediate difficulties.
• Alert and inform other service stakeholders about the incident.
• Facilitate an inquiry into the incident.
• Manage any publicity.

Such incidents may include:

• Serious crime or violence to service users, staff or members of the public.
• Serious threats to service users, staff or members of the public.
• Unexpected death or serious injury within the service.
• Unexpected emergency admission to hospital.
• Housing management incidents that lead to a serious disruption of a service including a fire, flood, power failure, in particular those which lead to the building being unoccupied.
• Communicable diseases.

Because the definition of an incident is broad, the process of reporting them and an explanation of their meaning must be covered within the contractor’s own risk management policy. The policy should also include the details for describing, managing, recording and investigating incidents, as well as reviewing outcomes.  This will be examined when the service is reviewed.

You must report all incidents within 24 hours and provide as much information as you can. The report is an opportunity to learn from the incident and reduce any contributory factors.

Report an incident

If you are regulated by CQC you must also comply with any CQC requirements for notifying them of incidents.

Where applicable you must provide us with regular updates on the status of the incident and how it is being dealt with. This information must be sufficient to enable us to either close or escalate the incident as appropriate.

If a provider wishes to discuss this procedure please email our Quality Assurance and Safeguarding Team: qaasu@liverpool.gov.uk