Glossary
The compliance terms, in plain English.
The words an auditor, a regulator or a standard uses, and what each one asks of a provider in practice. Every entry says what to keep on record and points to the regulator, whose site is the authority for your service.
Audit evidence
Audit evidence is the set of records a provider can produce to show that a standard is met: policies with their history, acknowledgements, training and credential records, incident and complaint registers, and the actions taken on them.
Complaints register
A complaints register is the record of every complaint a provider receives, with how each was acknowledged, investigated, resolved and closed, kept so the provider can show complaints are handled fairly and learnt from.
Corrective action
A corrective action is a specific, assigned task that fixes the cause of an incident, complaint, audit finding or identified risk, tracked from when it is raised until it is verified as closed.
Internal audit
An internal audit is a provider’s own structured check of its compliance against the standards it is held to, carried out before and between external audits, with findings turned into corrective actions.
Mandatory registration (NDIS)
Mandatory registration is the NDIS reform under which providers of particular support types, previously able to operate unregistered, must register with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission and meet the obligations registration carries.
NDIS Practice Standards
The NDIS Practice Standards are the quality standards a registered NDIS provider is audited against, setting out the outcomes a provider must achieve and the indicators an auditor looks for.
Notifiable incident (WHS)
A notifiable incident is a workplace death, serious injury or illness, or dangerous incident that an employer must notify to the work health and safety regulator in its state or territory under WHS law.
Open disclosure
Open disclosure is the practice of telling a person, and where appropriate their family or representative, openly and promptly when something has gone wrong in their care, including what happened, what it means and what will be done.
Policy acknowledgement
A policy acknowledgement, or sign-off, is a dated record that a named staff member has read and accepted a specific version of a policy, so a provider can show who had been told what, and when.
Reportable incident
A reportable incident is an incident in a defined category that a registered NDIS provider must notify to the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, as distinct from an incident the provider records and manages internally.
Restrictive practice
A restrictive practice is any practice or intervention that restricts the rights or freedom of movement of a person with disability, such as seclusion or chemical, mechanical, physical or environmental restraint.
Risk register
A risk register is a provider’s record of the things that could go wrong, each scored by likelihood and consequence, with the controls in place, the treatment planned and who owns it, reviewed on a cycle.
Serious incident (education and care)
In education and care, a serious incident is an event in a defined category, such as a serious injury, illness or trauma to a child, or a child going missing, that an approved service must notify to its state or territory regulatory authority under the National Quality Framework.
Serious Incident Response Scheme (SIRS)
The Serious Incident Response Scheme (SIRS) is the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission’s scheme requiring aged care providers to manage, and to report to the Commission, incidents in defined serious categories.
Worker screening check
A worker screening check is the clearance a worker in a risk-assessed role must hold to work for a registered NDIS provider, issued by the worker screening unit in the worker’s state or territory and recorded nationally.
Definitions describe each term in general. Categories, thresholds and timeframes are set by the regulator for your sector and change; confirm the current requirements there before acting on a real case. For how the terms play out in a system, see the features and the guides.