Incident Reports

The purpose of Accident/Illness/Injury Report Forms is to ensure an accurate tracking and appropriate follow-up of all serious incidents which occur in child care.

Notification of illness or injury is required by all licensing offices. Often a Licensing Officer follows-up all reportable incidents to ensure appropriate action was taken to identify strategies to prevent future occurrence. Reportable incidents include:

    * Physical abuse
    * Sexual abuse
    * Emotional abuse
    * Neglect
    * Unexpected illness and/or disease outbreak
    * Unexpected death
    * Fall, other injury
    * Motor vehicle injury/accident
    * Aggressive/unusual behaviour
    * Poisoning
    * Medication error

Report All Incidents

Child care providers should report all incidents that involve injury to both the parents and the licensing board as well as their insurance company. Incident forms, like the one included in Caregiver Aids: Business Forms for Caregivers and Parents and in our Business Forms (available on our Exclusive Products page) were developed to assist caregivers in informing parents of all incidents involving their child and to use for insurance purposes.

Parents . . . if your caregiver is not using an incident report, or other forms such as medication administration, travel permission forms, please talk to her about her method of communication with you should your child be injured in care. This is for your information as well as your protection. You want to know at all times when your child is injured, bitten by another child, or other incidents. Only through this knowledge can you talk to your provider about correcting the problems that arose to the injury and take steps yourself to ensure your child is safe and protected in child care