Surf Life Saving - Sydney Northern Beaches

Incident Management and Peer Support

Traumatic Incident Brochure

Suicide Bereavement

 

Critical Incident Debrief

The environment in which Surf Life Saving operates has the potential for members to be involved in serious incidents of a high-intensity and traumatic nature, and which do often involve death, serious injury and/or significant risk to lifesaving personnel.

A critical incident debrief is undertaken to ensure that:

  • Member welfare/support is optimised
  • The ability to re-establish core lifesaving services is achieved
  • Obligatory paperwork and data is recorded, collected and forwarded appropriately
  • The Surf Life Saving response is documented for future review or for legal reasons (if required)
  • Surf Life Saving is best positioned (through effective data collection) to provide drowning prevention recommendations to the Coroner and relevant local government authorities.

Expert Counselling

SLSNSW has a contract with a private counselling organisation. Expert counselling plays the following roles in SLS Critical Incidents:

  • Provision of trauma information/brochures
  • Provision of three free 24/7 counselling sessions to members once approved by SLSNSW
  • Provision of psychological first aid (emotive debrief) training to Branch Duty Officers and Peer Support Officers
  • Provision of group counselling sessions for significantly traumatic critical incidents

Accessing expert counselling:

Individual Counselling Session (post-incident): Members (or their parents for 18 years or younger) can request an individual counselling session as they deem necessary.

For more information please contact SLSNSW Lifesaving Team.

Emergency Response

LIFELINE TOOLKITS