Incident debriefs

A debrief is the conversation afterwards, written down. It is the part of an incident record that changes what happens next time, and it is the part most often skipped.

ARC asks a fixed set of questions so that debriefs across a home can be read together, and so nobody has to invent the wording at the end of a hard shift.

Two kinds

The young person's debrief. It is always required, so on any incident about a young person its form is already open on the page until one is saved — there is no button to find. Anyone in the home can fill it in, and there is one per incident. Four questions:

• How are you feeling following what happened?
• Could the team help things play out differently next time?
• Did the team do anything that upset you?
• Is there anything that you could've done to change the outcome?

Staff debriefs. One per member of staff involved. Five questions:

• How are you feeling following the incident?
• What went well during the incident?
• Was your shift partner supportive during the incident?
• Is there anything that could help you if this happens again?
• What could the manager suggest to improve the outcome next time?

Write the answers in the person's own words where you have them. A one-word answer is a real answer; an invented one is not.

Who can read a debrief

Every debrief — the young person's and the staff debriefs — is visible to managers, to read and to edit.

One exception: the member of staff who used a physical intervention during the incident can read the young person's debrief, because it is about their own actions. They cannot edit it, and they do not see staff debriefs.

Anyone else can still fill in the young person's debrief, but once it is saved they see only "The young person's debrief has been recorded", not what it says — including a debrief they conducted themselves. The printed incident report follows the same rules for whoever downloads it.

ARC creates an empty staff debrief for each person named as involved when the incident is recorded, so they are waiting to be filled in rather than needing to be remembered.

Filling one in

1. Answer the young person's debrief where it sits open on the incident — or, as a manager, select Add staff debrief, or Edit on one already there.
2. Answer what you can. Blank answers are allowed on a staff debrief; the young person's debrief needs at least one answer before it will save. The record shows only the questions that were answered.
3. Add any Actions.
4. Select Save debrief.

Actions become tasks

Each action you add becomes a follow-up task on the incident, assigned to you, the moment the debrief is saved. The row then shows Task created and the text locks, so a task can't be quietly reworded after it exists.

Removing a row before you save drops it. Removing it after the task exists is a task to close, not a debrief to edit.

Debriefs block sign-off

A manager cannot mark an incident reviewed while any debrief on it is empty, and the review checklist names who still owes one. That is deliberate: an unfilled debrief is an outstanding account of what happened, whatever the incident type.

An incident with staff seeded but no debriefs written will sit in the review queue until they are.