Incident Response
When your organisation has to respond to an incident you will be hugely relieved if you have already done the Planning and Training that you needed.
If your response is Prompt, Proactive and Personal it will help to prevent unnecessary psychological distress and Secondary Trauma.
A response that isn’t Prompt will leave the people affected feeling that you were unprepared, disorganised or reluctant to respond.
A response that is reactive instead of Proactive will cause unnecessary frustration and a barrier to being helped because the support needed wasn’t made as accessible as it could have been.
A response that isn’t Personal, but instead is impersonal will leave the people affected concluding that you weren’t interested in them personally.
What will you need to do?
The basic components of your response are likely to be:
- An Incident Management Team to direct your response that is made up of members with sufficient preparation for the role
- A Telephone Team able to handle incoming calls and make outgoing calls, including those from distressed colleagues, customers or relatives
- A Travelling Team (sometimes called a Go Team or Care Team) prepared to travel to a remote location if necessary in order to provide support on the scene
The colleagues who make up these teams should know the role they are expected to perform because they’ve received training and have practiced.
Who can help you?
However, although you are experts in your field it’s probable that Incident Management isn’t a key part of your colleagues’ skillset. You will also need to know where to turn to find reliable advice and practical support – particularly when dealing with the difficult psychological consequences of a traumatic or tragic incident.
Contact Clarity Stress and Trauma Ltd to ask how we can help you protect the psychological welfare of the people that would look to you for a professional and caring response.
The support from Clarity can take many forms – depending on the incident and your existing resources.
You may want timely on-site support from consultants who are highly experienced at travelling to and working in locations across the World. Clarity’s experienced and qualified consultants will travel to where they are needed to provide reassuring information and helpful advice both to the colleagues or customers affected by the incident, and to your colleagues and managers who are leading the response.
Perhaps you’ll need a helpline to be set up – or support for your colleagues if they are running a helpline
Or advice on how to approach colleagues or customers to offer them support
Or management advice on what the reactions are that you should anticipate in the circumstances confronting you
Case Studies
How could Clarity help you and your people when a traumatic or tragic incident has just happened?
Our customers sometimes find it difficult to imagine the ways in which our Incident Management Service could be helpful to them – and in some cases, not only helpful, but essential.
In this document you will find short descriptions of most of the Incident Response work delivered by Clarity in one six-month period.
Introducing support from Clarity
When you are concerned about the psychological welfare of your colleagues, customers or relatives it can be difficult to know how to offer the support that Clarity can provide.
It will help you achieve the best outcomes if the support you offer is as accessible as possible. You should try to avoid giving the impression that you think the people affected might be mentally disordered in some way. Instead, you should aim to inform them that you are aware the incident is likely to be distressing for any normal person so some specialist advice and guidance will probably be helpful for anyone.
We recommend that you don’t call the support “Counselling” as it isn’t technically accurate to do so and it is likely to put people off.
We can quickly produce and send you some text for you to edit so that it fits your situation. The text will explain the service you are offering and advise the recipients how to easily access that support.
Click here to see an example.