Safeguarding and the Care Act
ADASS Spring Seminar
16th April 2015
Dr Adi Cooper & Mimi Konigsberg
Key Principles of the Care Act
• the person knows best
• person’s views, wishes feelings and beliefs should always be considered
• the focus is on well-being, prevention or delaying the development of the need for care and
support and reducing needs
• decisions should be made taking all circumstances into consideration
• decisions with the person’s participation
• the need to balance the person’s wellbeing with that of family and friends involved with the
person
• the need to protect people from abuse and neglect
• the need to minimise the restriction of rights or freedom of action
• a strength based approach is critical to assessment and promoting independence
• the need to consider risk and proportionality when deciding how best to respond to
safeguarding concerns
Making Safeguarding Personal
is explicitly included in the Care Act
wellbeing definition includes protection from abuse and
neglect as well as wellbeing in all other areas of life
Care Act new function includes the provision of services
that prevent care needs from becoming more serious or
delay the impact of their needs
6 principles of safeguarding – Culture Change
Six Safeguarding Principles:
Empowerment -“I am asked what I want as the outcomes from the safeguarding process and
these directly inform what happens next”
Prevention - “I receive clear and simple information about what abuse is,
signs and what I can do to seek help”
how to recognise the
Proportionality - “I am sure that the professionals will work in my interest, as I see them and
they will only get involved as much as needed”
Protection - “I get help and support to report abuse and neglect. I get help so that I am able to
take part in the safeguarding process to the extent to which I want”
Partnership - “ I know that staff treat any personal and sensitive information in confidence, only
sharing what is helpful and necessary. I am confident that professionals will work together and
with me to get the best result for me”
Accountability - “I understand the role of everyone involved in my life and so do they”
Peer Challenge Message
“Peer challenges highlight that people tend not to be asked the
outcomes they want. Often they want more than one outcome,
which are sometimes not easy to reconcile. People generally
want to feel safe but also to maintain relationships. For some
people the only human contact they have is with the
person/people who is/are harming/abusing them”
Peer review messages LGA June 2013
Making Safeguarding Personal
The response -A simple message
‘Making safeguarding personal is about engaging with people about
the outcomes they want at the beginning and middle of working
with them and the ascertaining the extent to which those outcomes
were realised at the end.’
‘To do this, a mix of responses is required to enable people to
achieve resolution or recovery and access to justice’
LGA June Peer Review 2013
What Making safeguarding Personal can do
• MSP enables safeguarding to be done with, not to people
• MSP focuses on achieving meaningful improvement to people’s
circumstances rather than just on ‘investigation’ and ‘conclusion’
• MSP should utilise social work skills better than just putting
people through a process
• MSP should enable practitioners, families, teams and SABs to
know what difference MSP has made in outcomes for people
A strategic approach to MSP
• providing clear leadership in each agency working in safeguarding including
elected members.
• ensuring partner agencies are well-informed
• introducing person-centred, outcome-focused practice to safeguarding is a
cultural change that needs wide ownership
• recognising that partnership engagement in this culture shift is crucial
• building on existing good practice e.g personalisation
• working across regions to deliver consistency of practice and procedures and
workforce development
• mainstreaming this approach as good social work practice
Operational approach to MSP
• personalised information, advice and guides and language
• safeguarding and MARAC meetings –participation and an outcomes focus
• documentation – promote person centred practice and gather and report on
quantitative and qualitative evidence
• link to engagement and awareness raising – prevention
• address the use and commissioning of advocacy services
• focus on MCA and DoLS
• understanding positive approaches to risk and supported decision making
• encourage people to think about recovery as well as resolution using a range
of creative responses
Making Safeguarding Personal
How to deliver a person-centred, outcome focused approach?
Key Questions for Practitioners:
• What difference (outcome) is wanted or desired?
• How can we work with people to enable that to happen?
• How do we know outcomes have been understood and our
intervention has made a difference ?
• Does the person feel safer and protected ?
Making Safeguarding Personal Toolkit
What is it ?
The updated toolkit provides a range of models, theories, approaches, skills, areas of
specialism which are already common but not used in the safeguarding context
Some approaches have been established in just a small number of pioneering council areas
Some development work is needed to customise to adult safeguarding
How can it be used ?
A practitioner guide, a resource for service development, a tool to stimulate innovation
Examples include (from a longer list):
Use of family and networks, including group conferences
Building resilience, confidence, assertiveness, self-esteem
Attachment based approaches
Motivational interviewing and cycles of change
Implementation
The fundamental shift revolves around professional
practice; practice that puts the adult and their wishes
and experience at the centre of safeguarding
enquiries and which seeks to enable people to
resolve their circumstances, recover from abuse or
neglect and realise the outcomes that they want
“it is not business as usual”
Making Safeguarding Personal achievements
2009/10: Literature review
2010/11: A Toolkit of Responses developed
2012/13: 5 Councils were ‘test beds’
2013/14: 53 Councils actively participated
2014/15: Mainstreamed to all Councils with start up workshops
9 ADASS regional conferences
2 workshops for Safeguarding Adult Board Chairs
RiPfA evaluation (publication due in June 2015)
Updated MSP toolkit
Journal of Adult Protection Special Issue (June 2015)
DH/HSCIC work with IT providers
Support to individual L.A.’s and SAB’s
Updated LGA Domestic Abuse guide
Emerging Issues
•
leadership- national, regional and local-role of the DASS
•
how to engage partners / providers and align a MSP approach
•
how best to measure outcomes and ensure quality
•
managing DoLs/MCA workload pressures
•
commissioner/provider issues-stronger links + CCG’s, CQC, QSG’s
•
how to work with risk and engage Members on the dilemmas
•
workforce development -social workers and trainers
•
IT systems-support not hindrance
•
newer areas e.g. self-neglect and how to respond
• balance of procedures and professional judgement
• consumer/citizen engagement
Questions for discussion
How are you embedding Making Safeguarding
Personal forward?
What support do you need? What can you offer?
What issues are there for you in implementing the
adult safeguarding aspects of the Care Act?
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