Serious Situations
This section contains generalised suggestions from care space providers for responding to serious situations and are for the purposes of education only. Although reasonable care has been taken in preparing this content, any guidance of this sort has the potential to contain errors in both fact and opinion. Similarly, our recommendations about responses may not be applicable to every event, or may be superseded in time by newer, more appropriate guidelines or recommendations for best practice. Care space organisers should consult other sources of information as well, and defer to the recommendations of police and registered healthcare practitioners if in doubt.
These serious situations can be emotionally heavy. Take care of yourself and your team when preparing for them, when they happen, and afterwards. You can find support services on the resources page and Healthpoint.
Suggested Process for Serious Situations
The following information is intended to supplement the advice in ‘Process for care space guests’ to maximise safety and coordination:
Staff should address immediate safety concerns for both the person in distress, staff and bystanders first.
Never put staff or others at risk of significant harm in order to help someone else.
If a person loses consciousness, put them in the stable side (recovery) position, and do not leave them alone until medical staff advise that it is safe to do so.
Staff should send someone to inform a care space coordinator or senior care space staff member, who will assist with addressing immediate safety concerns and identify:
Who from the event management team should be informed.
Who will make decisions in this situation.
Who will respond to the situation.
Who else needs to be involved (e.g. medics, security, emergency services).
Who will communicate with others about what is happening (e.g. important stakeholders such as event organisers and the rest of the team).
It's important to get support from a coordinator or senior staff member when responding to any kind of serious situation. This is to ensure safety for the person experiencing harm, and also for you. You should not be expected to make potentially life-saving decisions alone, and it's always best to seek help or advice if you feel unsure on what to do.
The senior staff member will also begin a record and communicate how the team will record what has occurred.
This could be one record for the whole team or separate notes for everyone involved that are collected at the end of the shift. This task could be delegated to someone else. A sheet of paper with what occurred, at what time, and who wrote the note could suffice.
Ensure that physical and digital records are stored securely, both on- and off-site in accordance with governing privacy legislation.
They will also monitor the wellbeing of staff involved in a serious situation, including:
Ensuring they tap out with others when needed. Some particularly intense situations may require staff to rotate every 10 minutes or less if needed.
Providing follow-up support and opportunities to debrief with staff involved (see ‘Debriefing with care space staff and other care teams’).
Responding To Overdose
In the context of these guidelines, an overdose is when someone ingests a drug that leads to a significant risk to their physical health. Drug overdoses can be caused by many different types of drugs, including stimulants, depressants, opioids, dissociatives and psychedelics, as well as the combination of different types.
Self Harm And Suicide
As with any other context, mental health emergencies can occur at events. A person may voluntarily share information about both historical and/or present thoughts of deliberate self harm or suicidal ideation, including historical instances of actual self harm and suicide attempts. If someone shares this information, it is important to provide emotional support, explore their level of risk and seek appropriate support.
Violence Or Threats Of Violence
When threatening behaviour occurs, care space staff can try to prevent it from escalating to physical violence by using interventions based on communication, de-escalation, mediation and the activation of friend networks conducive to promoting safety.
Sexual Assault
Sexual assault can take many forms, for example: drug assisted sexual assault, groping, verbal comments, taking intimate images without consent, penetration, and attempted assault. When supporting survivors of sexual assault (including drink spiking), the priority is to increase their sense of trust, control, safety and self-esteem, which can be significantly undermined by these experiences.
Reporting Sexual Assault To Police
It is important that survivors are offered a support person from a survivor agency who can help guide and support them through the reporting process, and to provide up-to-date, region specific information on how the police operate, what services are available and the potential benefits and consequences of making a report.
Supporting People With Altered Perceptions
The use of drugs can sometimes result in altered perceptions, including delusions and hallucinations. Altered perceptions are often the intended goal of taking drugs, and usually end as the effects of the drug(s) wear off. However, they have the potential to become extremely distressing and overwhelming.
Missing Persons
When people go missing at an event, it is important to accurately record certain information and make a time-sensitive risk assessment to reduce the likelihood of harm occurring. Event organisers will likely have a missing persons procedure as well that should be followed, and either way, they should be notified immediately.
Other Risks To Safety
The following page provides brief overviews of a variety of other potential risks to safety that may be encountered while running care spaces.