Workshop for Birmingham City Council:
Risking your Dignity: hearing the citizen’s voice
The tension between ‘empowering’ and ‘protecting’
people:
Have the key principles underpinning the Pan West
Midlands Safeguarding Adults procedures been used to
improve practice and maintain dignity?
Copyright Integritas Support Ltd 01.05.14
What this workshop will cover – we have 1 hour
• Introductions – your name, place of work, job role and your
knowledge of the key principles underpinning the West
Midlands Safeguarding Adults procedures.
• West Midland’s Safeguarding Adults key principles within the
procedures document.
• Applying them in practice – two case studies – how do we
balance the right to autonomy with our duty to protect?
Facilitated by Wendy Silberman of:
Integritas Support seeks to promote the dignity and human rights of all
adults. We provide information and independent assessments for adults
with complex care needs and training for practitioners and carers
supporting them.
Copyright Integritas Support Ltd 01.05.14
The Safeguarding Adults multi-agency procedure for
the West Midlands
Key principles are drawn from the Department of Health Policy
on Safeguarding Adults published in 2011:
• Empowerment: person-led decisions and informed consent,
consulting the person about their desired outcome throughout the
Safeguarding process.
• Protection: Ensuring people are safe, have support and
representation throughout the process.
• Prevention: minimising the likelihood of repeated abuse and
recognising the person’s contribution to this in their safeguarding plans.
• Proportionality: interventions are as unintrusive as possible and
appropriate to the risk presented.
• Partnerships: Agencies are working constructively to make them safe.
• Accountability: Safeguarding should be transparent and consistent
and may be subject to external scrutiny (Courts).
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West Midland’s Safeguarding Adults procedure –
key principles
• User Outcomes: At every stage of the Safeguarding process what the
individual wants to achieve most be identified and revisited.
• Risk Assessment and Management: An assessment of risk should
be carried out with the individual at each stage of the process so that
adjustments can be made in response to changes.
• Mental Capacity: We assume all adults (16 and older) have the ability
to make their own decisions and are entitled to support to aid their
own decision-making abilities. If they do not have capacity, then
decisions will be made in their best interests and involve them
throughout this process.
• Protection Planning: In response to the identified risks, a multiagency plan will be developed with the aim of preventing further abuse
or neglect; keep the risk of abuse/neglect at a level acceptable to the
person being abused and the agencies supporting them and/or support
the individual to remain in a risky situation if that is their choice and
they have the capacity to make that decision.
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Working in small groups…
Please discuss one of your experiences of protection planning in
the context of adult Safeguarding.
• Who was involved in assessing the person’s risks?
• How were they assessed? What if there was disagreement,
how was that resolved?
• How did the agreed plan manage the risks or keep it at an
acceptable level to the person concerned and the agencies
involved?
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Protection planning (continued)
Protection planning also involves supporting anyone who has been
abused or neglected to recover from that experience.
It involves these key areas:
1. Information sharing: This is key between agencies to ensure that
the response is coordinated around the needs of the individual.
There is a balance to be made to maintain privacy/confidentiality
whilst also ensuring appropriate information is shared to secure
better outcomes.
2. Recording: Maintaining accurate records is vital to individuals’ care
and safety. Where an allegation of abuse is made, all agencies have
a responsibility to deep clear and accurate records to evidence what
action has been taken and what decisions have been made and why.
3. Feedback: At each stage of the Safeguarding process it is important
to ensure feedback is given to the adult at risk, alerters and partners.
The extent of this feedback will depend on various issues
(confidentiality, risk of compromising an investigation, etc).
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Returning to your groups…
Please try to think of two examples where you either shared
information across agencies or provided feedback.
Situation
Positive Outcome
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Negative Outcome – what
could have made it better
Applying the principles to case studies
Returning to your groups – you will be given a case study to
read and answer the questions as a group. We want you
to think about how you will evidence the key principles
of user involvement, risk assessment and management,
issues of capacity and protection planning to come up
with a potential plan of action.
If you don’t agree with each other that’s fine, just write
down the areas of disagreement. Thank-you.
Copyright Integritas Support Ltd 01.05.14
Justice Lord Munby….
“The local authority is a servant, not a master, a truth which on
occasions is too easily overlooked. Vulnerable adults and
their carers, look to the State – to a local authority – for the
support, the assistance and the provision of the services to
which the law, giving effect to the underlying principles of the
Welfare State, entitles them. They do not seek to be
“controlled” by the State or by the local authority. And it is
not for the State in the guise of a local authority to seek to
exercise such control. The State, the local authority, is the
servant of those in need of its support and assistance; it is not
their master. And any attempt to control is likely to be nothing
but counter-productive when it comes to a local authority
‘working together’, as it must, with family carers.”
Justice Munby Speech given to the annual AMHP Conference in 2011 and at a
Safeguarding Conference in 2013.
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Final Thoughts…
What do you think we can all do to embed
the principles of user involvement, risk
assessment, capacity issues and protection
planning in a way that maintains the dignity
of the individual at risk?
Copyright Integritas Support Ltd 01.05.14