Safeguarding and dignity: the
role of housing staff
Elaine Cass
Changing practice
• Still working to No Secrets and current local
procedures
• The Government statement on safeguarding 2013
and the 6 principles bridge the gap
• The forthcoming Care Act
• Moving away from process to personalising
safeguarding – see Making Safeguarding Personal
(LGA, ADASS, SCIE)
• Safeguarding practice that is not person centred can
make things worse!
Six safeguarding principles
•
•
•
•
•
•
Empowerment
Protection
Prevention
Proportionate responses
Partnership
Accountability
Empowerment
• Raise awareness and educate people to protect themselves
• Empower people with information, advice and advocacy
• Avoid risk averse practice – losing independence, choice and
control can have worse outcomes
• Reduce social isolation
• Practice relationship-based, person-centred working
• Recognise the central role of carers
• Ensure appropriate access to advocacy, or an Independent
Mental Capacity Advocate (IMCA)
• Minimising risk with the options least restrictive of the person’s
rights and freedoms
• Consider the use of mediation and family group conferences
Proportionate responses
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Person centred - what does the person want?
Mental capacity issues
Coercion or duress
Is anyone else at risk?
Who needs to be involved (police?)
Support for victims
Support for perpetrators
Mediation /family group conferences
Integrating personalisation and safeguarding
What is the purpose of the Safeguarding
Adults process?
• Choice and control balanced with minimising risk
• Preventing and protecting people with care and
support needs from abuse
• Supporting people who have been abused and
minimising future risk
• Supporting people with care and support needs who
pose a risk to others
• Improving service quality
• Learning from experience
New SCIE work: Safeguarding in
housing
Summary of key messages
• Housing staff are well placed to identify people at risk of abuse
• Joint working between housing and adult social care is essential
• SCRs highlight the need for housing to play a more effective role
• False perceptions about needing consent for safeguarding referrals
• Negative attitudes towards housing staff from social care
• No national agreement on the threshold for housing referrals
• Complex networks; housing providers may have to work with
numerous local authorities in their area and vice versa
• Some housing providers have IT systems inadequate for ‘customer
profiling’
Housing: key areas for improvement
Better joint working, information sharing and communication
•
•
•
•
Better links with public protection forums (safeguarding boards,
MARACs, MAPPAs, Health and Wellbeing Boards and Community
Safety partnerships).
Common understandings – shared language, training and policy
development
Clarity and understanding of the law relating to information sharing,
confidentiality, data protection and human rights.
Joint work to resolve issues where the individual may not be eligible for
social care support, people who refuse support and those who selfneglect.
Housing: key areas for improvement
cont…
Training and awareness raising
• Training all front line housing staff and contractors
• Better understanding of the Mental Capacity Act
• Common understandings of language and definitions regarding vulnerability and
safeguarding
Recognition of the role of housing staff in safeguarding
• Inclusion of housing staff in strategy meetings and investigations / enquiries
• Keeping referrers informed
Preventing abuse
• Empowering people with care and support needs, through education about
abuse, to better enable them to protect themselves
• Support for perpetrators of anti-social behaviour to reduce behaviours
• Support for carers
Sharing information
All staff should understand their responsibilities in
relation to:
• sharing important information to keep people safe
• the duty of confidentiality
• the Data Protection Act 1998
• the Human Rights Act 1998
• the Mental Capacity Act 2005
Sharing information: The Data Protection Act
Any personal information should be shared on the basis
that it is:
• necessary for the purpose for which it is being shared
• shared only with those who have a need for it
• accurate and up to date
• shared securely and in a timely fashion
• not kept for longer than necessary for the original
purpose
Sharing information: confidentiality
•
•
•
•
Don’t give assurances about absolute confidentiality
Try to gain consent to share information as necessary
Consider the person’s mental capacity to consent
Make sure that others are not put at risk by information being
kept confidential – is there a wider public interest, could your
action prevent a crime?
• Don’t put management or organisational interests before safety
• Share information on a ‘need to know’ basis
• Record decision making about information that is shared
Human Rights
• Individuals have a right to respect for their private life
under Article 8 of the European Convention on
Human Rights.
• This is not an absolute right and, as long as it is
necessary and in accordance with the law, it can be
interfered with.
• This means that the any interference must be justified
and for a particular purpose “for example, protection
of a person’s health, prevention of crime, protection
of the rights and freedoms of others.”
(Mandelstam, 2011)
Understanding the Mental Capacity Act
In most cases staff should be able to assess whether a person has
the mental capacity to make a specific decision (in safeguarding
practice this may be about their safety or about a risk).
The two-stage functional test of capacity
• Stage 1. Is there an impairment of or disturbance in the
functioning of a person’s mind or brain? If so,
• Stage 2. Is the impairment or disturbance sufficient that the
person lacks the capacity to make a particular decision?
The five principles of the MCA which
frame all decision-making
• A person must be assumed to have capacity unless it is established
that they don’t
• A person must not be treated as unable to make a decision unless
all practicable steps to help them do so have been taken without
success
• People have the right to make decisions that others might regard as
unwise or eccentric, this does not mean that they lack capacity
• If you do something to, or on behalf of, someone who lacks capacity
to consent to it, you must act in the person’s best interests
• Any decision or act must not restrict the person’s rights freedoms
more than is absolutely necessary.
Making decisions with capacity
The MCA says that a person is unable to make their own
decision if they cannot do one or more of the following four
things:
• understand information given to them
• retain that information long enough to be able to make the
decision
• weigh up the information available to make the decision
• communicate their decision – this could be by talking, using sign
language or even simple muscle movements such as blinking
an eye or squeezing a hand.
Respecting people’s wishes
If a person refuses intervention and has the mental
capacity to do so, their wishes should be respected unless:
• other people are at risk
• the alleged perpetrator has care and support needs and
may also be at risk
• a serious crime has been committed
• staff are implicated
• coercion is involved
Case studies in the context of the 6
principles
•
•
•
•
•
•
Empowerment
Protection
Prevention
Proportionate responses
Partnership
Accountability
xxxxxxxxx
@SCIE_socialcare
Social Care Institute for Excellence
Elaine.Cass@scie.org.uk
www.scie.org.uk
Info@scie.org.uk