Special Education

School Critical Incident Reponse Plan

• Step 1 - Gathering the facts
• Step 2 - Contact with the district
• Step 3 - Activate the School Team
• Step 4 - Communication with staff
• Step 5 - Set up counselling centres
• Step 6 - Talk with students
• Step 7 - Informing parents
• Step 8 - Funeral information
• Step 9 - Team review
• Step 10 - Remembrance activity

The following generic school critical incident protocol has been adapted from resources around the province and from other provinces. This material is designed as a template for districts to use when developing school handbooks or as a resource to compare with existing critical incident response protocols when they are under review.

This protocol example features ten steps. Because many school critical incidents involve sudden deaths of people in the school community, the language in the steps is oriented toward responding to such events. They can be adapted for use with any type of traumatic event affecting a school.

Throughout the protocol steps, this template uses the word Principal to refer to Principal or designate.

Step 1 - Gathering the Facts

1. Principal confirms the critical incident with appropriate sources of reliable information:

• immediate family,
• police,
• coroner,
• school district personnel, and/or
• community resource personnel such as a mental health worker.

2. Principal collects information on the critical incident, including:

• verification of the details,
• identification of individuals involved, and/or
• evaluation of the emotional status of school and, if necessary, respond to the immediate safety needs of students and staff.

3. Principal consults with the families affected to determine their wishes concerning public announcements and information for school staff and students.

Step 2 - Contact With the District

1. Principal telephones the designated District Critical Incident Response Team leader. If the leader is unavailable, the Principal contacts another member of the District Team who in turn will call the other members of the District Team.
   
2. Ensure that the predetermined media contact person for the district is informed. This person handles all media requests for information and arranges for the preparation of press releases if necessary. The decision of the family about privacy of information must be respected and possible legal implications related to privacy issues must be considered.

3. The District Team leader arranges for all involved schools and personnel to be informed by telephone. The timing of these calls should be sensitive to the needs of the school community most affected by the incident.

Step 3 - Activate the School Team

1. The Principal contacts the members of the School Team and calls them together for a meeting. The School Team will implement an appropriate plan of action that takes into consideration both the wishes of the family or families and the needs of the school.
   
   A sample meeting agenda for use at a School Team meeting is provided on page 50 of this resource guide. In brief, at this initial meeting the team should:

• Distribute the Critical Response Team Checklist (sample on page 49).
• Determine what needs to be done.
• Clarify each person's tasks.
• Ensure that confidentiality is maintained until information is shared with the whole staff and clarify family privacy issues.

2. The School Team notifies the rest of the staff including secretarial, janitorial and other support staff of a special staff meeting. If the critical incident occurred during an evening or weekend, a scripted telephone tree message can be used to call staff to a meeting before the next school day. The School Team should not discuss the incident on the telephone unless it is already widely known in the community. Care should be taken about using the phone tree:

• Ensure that each person understands the message about the staff meeting by asking them to repeat the message back to the caller,
• Avoid leaving a message on an answering machine/voice mail or with a child, and
• Reassign telephoning responsibility for people who may be most affected by the incident.

3. Tasks for the School Team before the start of the school day, if possible:

• Determine further details of the event.
• Ensure that the predetermined media contact person is provided with detailed information necessary to effectively carry out the role.
• Determine the family's wishes regarding personal property if the incident has been a sudden death or suicide and ensure that personal property is secure. For example, replace the lock on the individual's locker if the incident has been a student death or injury.
• Decide what course of action will be used to deal with potential "shrines" created by classmates of the deceased after a student death. It is important to establish a protocol on this matter. Allowing a "shrine" in one instance, but not in the next, may raise questions of fairness and favouritism that can escalate emotions and introduce conflict unnecessarily.
• Assess whether teachers-on-call will be needed and advise the appropriate person to contact them.
• Identify members of the school community that may be most affected by the incident and plan support for these people.
• Assess need for additional counselling support in the school and ask the District Team to assist in making the necessary arrangements.
• Plan a meeting to inform staff. See page 51 for a sample staff meeting agenda.
• Prepare a written statement for the staff meeting.
• Decide whether a letter will go home with students informing parents of the critical incident.

4. Tasks for the Team during the school day:

• Supply a brief, written statement for office staff to use in referring incoming queries or media calls. A script helps to ensure that callers are redirected to the official media contact person.
• Contact other nearby schools such as feeder schools which may be affected and ensure that District Team has accurate information so that they can inform all schools in the district.
• Activate plans for drop-in counselling centres and assign counsellors and other staff as appropriate.
• Contact required outside resource people as appropriate, for example: mental health services, police liaison officer, Regional Operating Officer (area manager of the Ministry for Children and Families), and/or public health nurses.
• Bring in additional support staff if needed with the help of the District Team.
• Lower the flag when appropriate. This is a potentially contentious issue, particularly in the case of a suicide, which needs to be discussed by the staff as part of the advance planning for a critical incident.
• Prepare the letter to parents if one is needed. See pages 38 and 39 of this resource guide for sample letters.
• Implement planning for Critical Incident Stress Debriefing for staff for the end of the school day, if possible. See Appendix 3 on page 59 for material on Critical Incident Stress Debriefing.

Step 4 - Communication With Staff

1. Inform all staff of the critical incident at an emergency staff meeting prior to the start of school, if possible. In addition to teachers, be sure to inform secretaries, custodians, teacher assistants, itinerant staff such as therapists, cafeteria staff, bus drivers, public health nurse and playground supervisors of the meeting. See page 51 for sample agenda. After the meeting, inform all staff who were unable to attend the meeting.
   
2. Carefully orchestrate the staff meeting in order to assure staff that the team's plans are in place. All members of the School Critical Incident

Response Team should attend. Include the following in the meeting:

• Advise staff to deal with students to a level of their comfort.
• Reassure staff that they will be supported in their efforts to give comfort to students and that additional help is available to anyone who needs it, staff or students.
• Remind staff of items in their critical incident handbook which may be useful over the next few days and provide them with written directions for the day as soon as possible during or after the meeting.
• Introduce any people from the District Team or the community support staff who are in attendance at the meeting and may be present in the school providing support to staff or students.

3. Develop a plan for the day with the staff:

• Maintain a regular school schedule, if possible.
• Cancel special activities, if necessary.
• Carefully state the information which should be given to students during class discussion and provide all staff with additional copies of agendas for class discussions to use with students.
• Inform the staff of the counselling services that are available to staff, students and parents. In the case of a sudden death or suicide, consider assigning a counsellor to visit the scheduled classes of the deceased.
• Identify students who are closest friends or relatives of the deceased or injured and make plans to inform them with additional sensitivity and support.
• Identify students at risk, those who are vulnerable to stress or changes in routines, and make specific plans for each student. This task can be assigned to a key staff member such as a counsellor, special education teacher or child care worker.
• Ensure that staff members who are absent get information. Make plans to assist on-call teachers with classroom discussions.
• Plan for informing students who are absent. In the case of students who might be at risk, telephone their parents immediately.

4. Additional staff meetings may be needed:

• Keep staff informed throughout the day by calling short update meetings during breaks.
• Gather information about student and staff needs throughout the day.
• Provide all staff with information about plans for Critical Incident Stress Debriefing.

Step 5 - Set Up Counselling Centres

Plans for the designation of counselling centres in case of a critical incident should be in place as part of the protocol development. When a traumatic event occurs, there is not sufficient time to carefully discuss how this service will be organized. Specific rooms or areas of the school can be designated for dealing with a potentially large number of people who are grieving or experiencing high levels of stress following a critical incident.

Some ideas suggested by schools who have planned and used this type of service following a school critical incident include:

• Individual students can take a break during the day to visit the counselling centre to get support in dealing with their emotional reactions to the death or traumatic incident.
• It is important that support be available to students, at the moment they need it, in a private and supportive setting.
• Small group counselling sessions may be helpful if personnel assigned to the centres have experience and training in counselling.
• Staff in the centres should have written information to give to students, such as normal stages of grief and guidelines for how to arrange for support from mental health workers.
• Large groups of students should not be allowed to congregate in the centre.
• Schools should consider calling on elementary and secondary counsellors from neighbouring schools, when possible, to augment available counselling personnel.

Suggestions for setting up counselling centres and grief groups are included in the Appendices 1 and 2 on pages 53 and 55 of this resource guide.

Step 6 - Talk With Students

1. Be sure there is a teacher in each classroom as the students come in for the day or the first period class.
   
2. Give information on the critical incident in a low-key and factual manner, including:

• what happened,
• when and where the events occurred,
• who was there at the time of the incident,
• what happened after the event,
• who might be seriously affected by the incident because of their relationship with people directly affected by the traumatic event, and
• what is going to happen next. In the case of a sudden death, try to have information available on the funeral arrangements.

3. Give the students the opportunity to react, discuss, and ask questions. See page 31 for a suggested format for class discussion following a critical incident.

• Allow time for the students to express their feelings. Keep in mind that reaction times may vary.
• Give students permission to express what they uniquely feel. Listen and be empathetic.

• Consider using activities to help students process their grief, such as art, poetry or creative journal writing.

4. Once the talk seems to be over, begin the regular class routines with flexibility to respond to more questions throughout the day.

Teachers will need to be prepared to hear some unusual questions and to handle these questions in a matter-of-fact manner. They will need to model, by their behaviour, that the critical incident is serious while at the same time show warmth and understanding for all students. Teachers should watch carefully for individual students who are having a hard time coping to ensure they get access to help in the counselling centres. It is better to over-refer than under-refer. Teachers should not try to second guess the level of grief of a student or staff member, as people respond to trauma and grieve differently.

Following a critical incident, a child may report other traumatic events in their lives such as child abuse. All staff should be clear on the protocol for reporting child abuse and neglect and be prepared to take action to get help for the student in areas which may seem unrelated to the current trauma situation. For information on child abuse and negelect, all BC Schools have a copy of "The BC Handbook for Action on Child abuse and Neglect, 1998."

Step 7 - Informing Parents

Send a letter home with the students to inform parents of the incident, if appropriate. Sample letter formats, provided on pages 38 and 39, can be adapted for use following a critical incident. In general, parents who are well informed are better equipped to support their children at home.

Information shared in such a letter should be carefully worded to ensure that personal and family privacy is respected. As this letter is a written record, disclosure of personal information is covered by FOIPPA. Personal information should only be disclosed to the extend that it is permitted under FOIPPA. See page 42 for more information.

Step 8 - Funeral Information

In the case of a death, inform staff and students of plans for funeral arrangements. Many types of critical incidents involve sudden deaths: accidents, suicides, natural or physical disasters, or sudden acute health events. The school will need to provide information to the whole school community about formal occasions such as funerals or memorial services.

• When appropriate, students and staff should have the opportunity to attend the funeral. To do this, the School Team should arrange permission from district level administration to dismiss students.
• Decisions about allowing funeral attendance should be governed by the wishes of the family. Student and staff attendance at the funeral can provide support for the family if that is the family's choice. Students should be informed of the family's wishes regarding attendance at the funeral service.
• The funeral service can help peers understand and accept the death of a friend or colleague and can help to provide closure.
• Ensure that students who plan to attend the funeral are prepared by helping them anticipate what happens at funerals. Explain the purpose of various rituals, appropriate etiquette at the ceremony, and other topics as necessary, such as embalming, cremation, open caskets, burial and specific cultural practices.

Step 9 - Team Review

After each use of the Critical Incident Protocol the School Team should

meet to review the events while they are still recent, preferably within two weeks. This will serve several purposes: improve the plans, raise staff skills about the use of the protocol, and tie up loose ends and concerns following the critical incident. The meeting should include:

• a review of how well the protocol guided the actions of staff. Identify improvements that can be made in the school plan for future situations.
• re-evaluation of how well the actions taken as part of the plan were carried out. Appropriate changes can be made for next time, including additional training, if needed.
• ensuring that counselling for School Team members is available for staff who feel that they still need to deal with their own feelings about their role in the critical incident.
• a plan to write letters of appreciation to all who helped.

Step 10 - Remembrance Activity

Family wishes should guide planning of a remembrance activity after a critical incident which involved a student or staff death.

• Schools and districts are cautioned against holding a large assembly to honour the deceased because of the potential for group hysteria and for glorifying death in the case of a suicide. Large assemblies are not recommended for acute grief situations.
• Students or staff may wish to express their grief and sympathy by contributing something in the name(s) of the deceased: a scholarship fund, school landscaping, a school plaque, books for the library, construction of a showcase, or some other appropriate means. Caution should be taken when establishing a permanent or highly visible memorial to remember a student who completed suicide.
• Staff may need to provide leadership to students wishing to establish an appropriate remembrance, as judgment of peers may be impaired following a traumatic event.

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