Reporting Serious Incidents – Charity Commission report

The Charity Commission has published the
final report of its safeguarding taskforce. The taskforce aimed
to respond to the increased volume in serious incident report
following the Oxfam case and analyse the Commission’s serious
incident records to ensure that appropriate follow-up actions had
been taken.

The purpose of the work was the explore the nature of incidents
reported and the type of charity making the report, to inform the
Commission’s understanding of risks facing charities and its
approach to guidance and casework.

Key findings

The taskforce did not find any serious concerns about the way
charities or the Commission handled incidents at the time but has
identified the following concerns.

• Charities did not always receive enough evidence that charities
  were learning lessons to prevent similar incidents in
  future. 
• Reports of serious safeguarding incidents were not always made
  sufficiently quickly
• Serious concerns about the continued underreporting of serious
  incidents

In the accompanying
press release, the Commission stated that it must “work with
charities to address systemic underreporting of serious incidents
by charities”.

The Commission has already updated its guidance on
serious incident reporting and will be consulting with
charities and providing new resources.

What is a serious incident?

A serious incident is an adverse event, whether actual or
alleged, which results in or risks significant:

• harm to your charity’s beneficiaries, staff, volunteers or
  others who come into contact with your charity through its work
  (who are collectively referred to throughout this guidance as
  people who come into contact with your charity through its
  work)
• loss of your charity’s money or assets
• damage to your charity’s property
• harm to your charity’s work or reputation

For the purposes of this guidance, “significant” means
significant in the context of your charity, taking account of its
staff, operations, finances and/or reputation. 

How WCVA can support you with safeguarding

WCVA will continue to support third sector organisations with
their safeguarding responsibilities. A wide range of resource are
available on our safeguarding
hub.

If you have any concerns about serious incident reporting, you
can contact our safeguarding service for help by email safeguarding@wcva.org.uk
or telephone, 0300 111 0124 (option 6).