On 8 December 2021 as part of the PSA’s continuing consultation, the PSA (staff & your delegate) met with the Department to hear the feedback on critical incidents from the last vacation period and plans for School Psychologists attending to critical incidents in the next school holidays.

Read more here about our previous meeting in September.

Members are advised of the following:

• School Psychologists rostered to attend to “critical incidents” is on an opt in basis only;
• If you have plans to do other work in the holidays and/or do not feel confident to opt in you are not required to do so;
• The term “critical incident” refers to the death of student/teacher/or school community member or a collective emergency such as a fire on school grounds;
• The Principal will lead the response to a critical incident.
• The counselling response will be predominantly via tele-health and will only be face-to-face at the direction of the Principal.
• School Psychologists are not required to provide counselling to school staff as they have access to the EAP.
• Operational hours are 9:00am – 3:30pm Monday – Friday. Response outside of these hours is not required.
• DoE Psychologists (with supervision qualifications) will provide supervision, support and de-briefing to School Psychologists. The Supervisor will also be on the Critical Incidents Roster and their number will be provided to School Psychologists who are rostered on.
• Currently, the DOE is offering one-hour critical incident webinars as an introduction to Mental Health First Aid. They plan on expanding this training in 2022.

The Chain of command in the event of a critical incident is as follows:

The Director will contact the Executive Director, Anne Reddie who then will co-ordinate with the Supervising Psychologist. The Supervising Psychologist will contact the relevant School Psychologist on the roster.

Need assistance at work?

As your union, the PSA is here to support you. If you have any questions or concerns you can contact us for support, advice and advocacy on 1300 772 679, Monday-Friday, 9:00am-5:00pm.

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