Crisis Management for Schools

Overview

Every year, children from independent schools travel around Britain and abroad on geography field trips, adventure holidays, sport tours, skiing holidays, theatre trips and Corps camps. Many also use school buses to travel to and from school each day.

Pupils and staff attending the school are joined by parents, family and friends for sports days, parents' evenings, school plays and many other activities.

Occasionally, very occasionally, an unexpected crisis arises which may affect pupils, staff or parents. From a coach crash to a skiing accident, from a natural disaster to an act of terrorism, from a fire in the school kitchens to a financial scandal, even a minor crisis can have far-reaching consequences for the life of a school.

Continuing the day to day operations of the school can prove particularly demanding whilst dealing with the after-effects of a crisis. Handling persistent media calls, support services, concerned parents, children and staff can be a harrowing experience without suitable training or backup.

The Product:

CMS - Crisis Management for Schools - offers a comprehensive package of services to schools on three levels:

Crisis Planning
- Full audit of the school's crisis management plan
- Creation of a bespoke support manual
Crisis Management Training
- In-house training of staff on crisis management procedures
Crisis Response and Support Services
- Crisis response services including crisis mentoring, emergency response support, telephone call centre support, trauma counselling, etc.

Product Benefits:

Protect your school brand and reputation.
Reassurance of your school's professionalism to parents.
Executives and key staff will function more effectively in a crisis.
The school will be better prepared.
The school will fulfill its duty of care to its various stakeholders.

Expert Providers:

CMS is designed and promoted by SFS Group Ltd, a specialist provider of innovative insurance solutions to the independent schools market, in conjunction with docleaf ®, a highly experienced operator in the field of crisis management.

docleaf ® has extensive experience and their expertise extends from developing plans and procedures through to direct experience of mass fatalities, disasters, unwanted media attention and crises impacting all types of business operation.

docleaf ® can provide a comprehensive and fully integrated approach to crisis management, assisting a school in better understanding where their vulnerabilities and capabilities lie. They can deal with the issues that may arise from this analysis and work with a school to build a robust and effective defence strategy by using their planning, training and testing programmes. They can also assist with auditing and on-going quality control.

In the event of a crisis, docleaf ® can provide a comprehensive range of support services:

24/7 telephone help-line
Crisis mentoring
24/7 Emergency Response Call Centre, activated within 60 minutes
Human support - trauma counselling
PR support and crisis communications assistance
Other specialists

This allows school staff to focus on managing the internal crisis and day to day operations.

Case Study

docleaf ® were contacted following the death of a child during a camping holiday in France. They responded by dispatching specialist support to the incident scene, including trauma specialists to support all those involved, from family members to the staff at the campsite. All operational issues and media enquiries were managed through their headquarters in the UK. Support then continued after the event with on-going emotional support to both staff and family. Whilst a tragic incident, the response was aided by appropriate planning and preparation along with professional and rapid intervention.