Near-Miss and Learning Review Procedure

PURPOSE

DCIRS Community Care is committed to continual improvement and proactive safeguarding. This procedure establishes a structured approach to near-miss reporting to strengthen systems, prevent serious incidents, and meet NDIS expectations for learning-focused incident management.

DEFINITIONS

Near-Miss is an unplanned event that could reasonably have resulted in serious harm but did not, due to chance or timely intervention. Examples include:

• Rescue from water or traffic

• Temporary loss of supervision

• Participant left unable to move safely

• Equipment failure without injury

PROCEDURE

Responsibilities of Workers

All workers must:

• Report near misses as soon as practicable

• Immediately notify management if serious harm was narrowly avoided

• Provide factual, objective information

Responsibilities of Managers and Supervisors

Managers and supervisors are responsible for providing an environment that is safe for workers and others. They must:

• Review contributing environmental, behavioural and system factors

• Identify root causes, not individual fault

• Determine corrective and preventative actions

• Record learnings and outcomes

Learning and Improvement

Near-miss data must inform:

• Training and supervision priorities

• Support plan adjustments

• Staffing decisions and ratios

• Policy and procedure updates

Repeated or high-risk patterns must be escalated for organisational review.

Documentation

Near-misses must be documented using the Incident Report Form. Outcomes and learnings must be recorded and tracked.

ASSOCIATED DOCUMENTS

• Incident and Risk Reporting Policy

• Incident Report Form

• NDIS Safeguarding Policy

• Risk Management Policy

VERSION AND REVIEW INFORMATION

DCIRS reserves the right to amend and vary this procedure from time to time.

Version 1.0: 23 April 2026 | Review Date: 23 April 2028

© 2026 DCIRS Community Care Pty. Ltd. All rights reserved. This procedure is the intellectual property of DCIRS Community Care. No part of this document may be reproduced, distributed, copied, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, digital scraping, or other electronic methods, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.