The 48 hours after a serious incident, one calm step at a time

Right now: make sure everyone is safe

If anyone is hurt or in immediate danger, that comes before every other consideration on this page. Call 999 for police or an ambulance. Separate the people involved, calmly. Nothing else needs deciding in the next hour.

Once the immediate situation is stable, the most useful thing you can do is slow down. A serious incident is frightening, and the decisions that cause the most damage afterwards are almost always the ones made at 9pm in the middle of it. An allegation is not a finding. How you handle the next 48 hours matters — both for fairness to your foreign domestic helper and for your own position if this ends up somewhere more formal.

If it's a criminal matter, it goes to the Police

Some incidents are not for an employer to resolve privately, and trying to handle one internally helps nobody. If what happened is a matter for the Police, call 999. That is true whichever way the allegation runs, and it is not an escalation you need to feel guilty about — it is the correct route for a serious allegation, and it protects everyone involved, including your helper.

This is also the practical answer if it is late at night. The Police are there around the clock; an agency is not. If something is happening right now that needs a response right now, that response is 999, not a phone call to us.

Write it down tonight, while it's fresh

Before you sleep, write down what happened: what occurred, when, who was present, what was actually said. Keep it factual and resist the urge to editorialise — you are recording, not building a case.

Then gather what already exists: messages, medical notes, anything documenting the sequence. Notes made the same night are worth far more than a reconstruction three weeks later, when everyone's memory has quietly reshaped itself around how they now feel about it.

Don't dismiss her on the spot

Whatever you are feeling tonight, this is the one action to hold off on. The circumstances that allow an employer to dismiss a helper immediately are narrow and specific, and getting it wrong is what turns a bad night into a formal claim against you. This deserves a careful answer rather than a decision made while adrenaline is still running, and it is the first thing to ask your agency about tomorrow.

What you can do tonight

You will probably want distance between your household and your helper while you work out what happened. That instinct is reasonable, and there is a version of it that doesn't create a second problem.

You can tell her she is not to carry out her duties for now, while things are sorted out. That is a pause, not a dismissal, and it costs you nothing. What you should not do is put her out of the house or send her to stay elsewhere — her accommodation is part of her employment, and improvising a new arrangement tonight will create a problem that outlasts the incident. Keep people safe and separate within the home you already have, and let tomorrow's advice sort out the rest.

Call your agency before you act

Before you take any step that changes her employment, talk to your agency. Not afterwards — before. Most of the situations that become expensive did so because someone acted decisively on the first night and only asked about the consequences later.

Our office is open 10am to 7pm, seven days a week. If tonight is outside that, it is not a problem — nothing on the employment side has to be settled before morning, and the things that genuinely cannot wait are the ones handled by 999 and by a hospital, not by us. Write your notes, keep everyone safe, and call us when we open.

When you do, we will tell you what your actual options are, what each one costs, and what needs to happen in what order. Talk to us, and if it does end in termination, we will make sure the final payment is calculated correctly rather than becoming its own dispute — see what's owed.