Safe and Happy: approaches to improving
adult safeguarding
BASW Annual Conference - Safeguarding
Vulnerable Adults and Children in a
Climate of Constant Change
Wednesday 30th April 2014
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Lyn Romeo
Chief Social Worker for Adults
Changing landscape for adult safeguarding
• Repositioning of social work in adult social care
• National legislation and policy (e.g. Care Bill, MCA/DoLs,
Mental Health Act; Autism , Dementia)
• Personalised, integrated services, e.g. mental health,
primary care
• Financial and demographic pressures:
o Reduced social care budgets
o Ageing population: dementia, long-term conditions,
end of life, palliative care
o Changing expectations of care and support – user of
services as equal partner (strengths-based approaches)
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Safe and Happy: approaches to improving adult safeguarding - BASW Safeguarding Conference (30 April 2014)
Care Bill Clauses 42-48 – Adult Safeguarding
The first statutory framework for protecting adults from abuse and
neglect:
• New duty for local authority to carry out enquiries (or cause
others to) where it suspects an adult is at risk of abuse or neglect.
• Requirement for all areas to establish a Safeguarding Adults Board
(SAB) to bring together LA, NHS and police to coordinate activity to
protect adults from abuse and neglect.
• SABs to carry out safeguarding adults reviews into cases where
someone who is experiencing abuse or neglect dies or there is
concern about how authorities acted, to ensure lessons are
learned.
• New ability for SABs to require information sharing from other
partners to support reviews or other functions.
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Safe and Happy: approaches to improving adult safeguarding - BASW Safeguarding Conference (30 April 2014)
What does this mean for social work?
Further refine and develop core skills and knowledge:
• Critical assessment and analysis of risk and ability to
make defensible, professional decisions
• Working with people and their families/carers in
complex situations and networks
• Centre on the needs and wishes of the individual
• Legal literacy – understand and accessing appropriate
legislation
• Improving skills and application – e.g. attachment-based
social work with adults, family group and asset-based
approaches
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Safe and Happy: approaches to improving adult safeguarding - BASW Safeguarding Conference (30 April 2014)
New approaches in personalised, integrated care
Making Safeguarding Personal - 53 councils applying an
outcomes-based approach to adult safeguarding, focused on:
• Developing a real understanding of what people wish to
achieve (and how)
• Recording their desired outcomes
• Seeing how effectively these outcomes have been met
• Using a range of responses that seek to reconcile
circumstances or conflicting desired outcomes and
provide alternative supports
• Including specific responses such as mediation, family
group conferencing, restorative justice, alongside weaving
a person-centred approach into core practice
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Safe and Happy: approaches to improving adult safeguarding - BASW Safeguarding Conference (30 April 2014)
Key findings and benefits
1. Benefits to users of services
• People felt more empowered and in control of their safeguarding
experience when they were involved from the outset.
• Improved effectiveness and resilience
• Better relationships with professionals
• Protection of key elements of person’s quality of life
2. Benefits to social work practice
• More positive, motivated and enthused
• Able to assess effectiveness from users’ perspectives
• Practice tools and clearer, more transparent plans and records
• Clearer endings to safeguarding support
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Safe and Happy: approaches to improving adult safeguarding - BASW Safeguarding Conference (30 April 2014)
And what worked for councils
• Involving people from the outset increases awareness and use of
advocates, IMCA and others.
• Sound application in applying MCA and DoLs in safeguarding
adults, particularly where adults lack capacity.
• Management of risk as central to supporting enablement.
• Improving recording systems.
• Revising policies and procedures to ensure person-centred, not
process-driven, approach.
• Developing core practice skills and tools - evidence base, legal
knowledge, good social work skills, training and development.
• Improved support for front-line practitioners to shift personcentred safeguarding practice.
• Culture change – informed and engaged partners, leadership.
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Safe and Happy: approaches to improving adult safeguarding - BASW Safeguarding Conference (30 April 2014)
“What good is it making
someone safer if it merely
makes them miserable?”
Lord Justice Munby, ‘What Price Dignity?’ (2010)
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Safe and Happy: approaches to improving adult safeguarding - BASW Safeguarding Conference (30 April 2014)