Hi Girls
This will help you with the next unit topic.
Tracy
Key messages for safeguarding Adults
The Government
believes that safeguarding is everybody’s business with communities playing a
part in preventing, detecting and reporting neglect and abuse. Measures need to
be in place locally to protect those least able to protect themselves.
Safeguards against poor practice, harm and abuse need to be an integral part of
care and support. We should achieve this through partnerships between local
organisations, communities and individuals.
The Department of
Health (DH) released the Statement of government policy on adult safeguarding,
which set out six key safeguarding principles:
1. Empowerment: a presumption of person-led
decisions and informed consent.
2. Protection: support and representation for
those in greatest need.
3. Prevention: it is better to take action before
harm occurs.
4. Proportionality: a proportionate and least
intrusive response appropriate to the risk presented.
5. Partnership: local solutions achieved via
services working with their communities. Communities have a part to play in
preventing, detecting and reporting neglect and abuse.
6. Accountability: accountability and
transparency in delivering safeguarding.
The document goes on
to describe what these principles might look like from the perspective of the
adult at risk:
·
Empowerment: I am consulted about the outcomes I want
from the safeguarding process and these directly inform what happens.
·
Protection: I am provided with help and support to
report abuse. I am supported to take part in the safeguarding process to the
extent to which I want to do so and to which I am able.
·
Prevention: I am provided with easily understood
information about what abuse is, how to recognise the signs and what I can do
to seek help.
·
Proportionality: I am confident that the responses to risk
will take into account my preferred outcomes or best interests.
·
Partnership: I am confident that information will be
appropriately shared in a way that takes into account its personal and
sensitive nature. I am confident that agencies will work together to find the
most effective responses for my own situation.
·
Accountability: I am clear about the roles and
responsibilities of all those involved in the solution to the problem.
The Statement also
sets out what these principles might mean for agencies involved in safeguarding
adults:
·
Empowerment: we give individuals relevant information
about recognising abuse and the choices available to them to ensure their
safety. We give them clear information about how to report abuse and crime, and
any necessary support in doing so. We consult them before we take any action.
Where someone lacks capacity to make a decision, we always act in his or her
best interests.
·
Protection: our local reporting arrangements for abuse
and suspected criminal offences, along with our risk assessments, work effectively.
Our governance arrangements are open and transparent and communicated to our
citizens.
·
Prevention: we can effectively identify and
appropriately respond to signs of abuse and suspected criminal offences. We
make staff aware, through provision of appropriate training and guidance, of
how to recognise signs and take any appropriate action to prevent abuse from
occurring. In all our work, we consider how to make communities safer.
·
Proportionality: we discuss with the individual and where
appropriate with partner agencies the proportionality of possible responses to
the risk of significant harm before we take a decision. Our arrangements
support the use of professional judgement and the management of risk.
·
Partnership: we have effective local information-sharing
and multi-agency partnership arrangements in place and staff understand these.
We foster a ‘one team’ approach that places the welfare of individuals above
organisational boundaries.
·
Accountability: the roles of all agencies are clear,
together with the lines of accountability. Staff understand what is expected of
them and others. Agencies recognise their responsibilities to each other, act
upon them and accept collective responsibility for safeguarding arrangements
