What every staff member should be able to tell an inspector

Staff should be able to explain, without hesitating, their own role and who's in charge; how to escalate a safeguarding concern and to whom; how medication is authorised and administered; how an accident gets reported; who's allowed to collect which child and what happens if someone unauthorised tries; safe sleep practice; infection control basics; how positive behaviour support actually works day to day; and — the one that's easy to forget to rehearse — what they're supposed to do if staffing or ratios are disrupted mid-shift.

This list overlaps heavily with the written policies a service holds, which is exactly the point: a policy that staff can't restate in their own words in a conversation with an inspector is functioning as a document, not as practice. Tusla's inspection process leans on this deliberately — observation, records, and conversation together, sometimes called triangulation — because a polished compliance folder doesn't tell an inspector anything about whether the person actually in the room right now knows what to do.

None of this is solved by better paperwork; it's solved by staff actually knowing where to find the specific fact they need, fast, when it's asked of them — which authorised collector is listed for a specific child, whether a specific allergy has an emergency response attached, who the safeguarding lead is this week if the usual person is on leave. The bar isn't memorising everything; it's knowing where the true answer lives and trusting it's current.