Preventing harm and protecting those at risk
The DASS statutory guidance requires local authorities to ensure:
…DASS has responsibility and authority for ensuring that the local authority maintains a clear organisational and operational focus on safeguarding adults and that relevant statutory requirements and other national standards are met.
The Care Act 2014 places a legal duty on local authorities to respond to safeguarding concerns and to co-ordinate a multi-agency local adult safeguarding system. This includes working with other agencies to prevent abuse and to protect those at risk of harm. The Integrated Care Board(s) representing the NHS and the police are the other two statutory partners.
The duties in the Care Act 2014 are unchanged by the Health and Care Act 2022, but be aware that NHS colleagues may be more focused on the NHS England document ‘Safeguarding accountability and assurance framework’ and may need periodic reminding of their responsibilities under the Care Act 2014. The statutory obligations of the now-defunct Clinical Commissioning Croups (CCGs) for safeguarding adults have transferred directly to Integrated Care Boards (ICBs).
Regulators will, of course, be interested in how effective a council is in delivering its adult safeguarding responsibilities and the associated risk management. They will also be interested in the associated duties relating to provider failure and market management.
Each local authority must establish a Safeguarding Adults Board and because local authorities have the lead responsibility for safeguarding, you, as a DASS, will have to ensure the board is well run. Your key focus is being able to demonstrate the positive impact for local people, resulting from safeguarding interventions, plans and strategies.
If partners are not delivering on their responsibilities, it may be tempting to see it as their issue to sort out, but it is the council, and you, as DASS, who risk being criticised. For this reason, be pro-active in resolving problems as soon as you spot emerging issues, whether they relate to the council or other partners.
You must ensure there are effective safeguarding policies, guidance and procedures in place, and that staff are appropriately trained and equipped to recognise and respond to signs of abuse. Working closely with other agencies to co-ordinate and deliver effective safeguarding services is essential.
This includes being alert to the fact that abuse can happen in care settings and sometimes by the care workforce. Strong commissioning, contracting and quality assurance arrangements for contracted services are an effective preventative measure to mitigate this risk.
Care Act responsibilities sit in the context of a much wider legislative framework regarding people’s rights and protections, e.g. the Human Rights Act and the Mental Capacity Act. As a DASS, you will take a view as to whether or not the various statutory duties and powers are being considered in a balanced way as the council delivers its functions, and you will seek legal advice when specialist considerations are needed. You can find a helpful summary on page six of the NHS England document ‘Safeguarding accountability and assurance framework’.
If you do not have a professional background in social work, and/or are not familiar with current safeguarding responsibilities and practice, you will need to make sure a member of your senior team is given responsibility and accountability for professional oversight and delivery relating to safeguarding. You cannot delegate your statutory duties, but you can ensure someone with appropriate professional skills and experience has operational oversight.
Effective safeguarding requires a proactive approach to prevention. This means working with all local communities to raise awareness of the signs of abuse, and promoting the importance of reporting abuse and seeking help when needed.
You must take pro-active steps to ensure your safeguarding services are in keeping with the principles of Making Safeguarding Personal and are accessible and responsive to the unique needs of all individuals from all backgrounds.
Issues with safeguarding may be more difficult to identify and respond to in some locations and communities. Your teams must work closely with partners to use the insights of health inequality and general inequality information to help improve safeguarding services and make them more accessible. This includes appropriate access to advocacy services.
Your local Safeguarding Adults Board (SAB) should receive detailed performance and outcomes reports to provide assurance on a range of safeguarding matters or to identify any necessary mitigations when improvements are needed. You will use this information to maintain a positive culture of continuous improvement, underpinned by co-operative working approaches between partners.
Although data reports can provide insights into local activity, types of abuse can change over time, e.g. the increasing levels of online activity and exploitation-related criminality that are not reflective of council boundaries, alongside increases in domestic and financial abuse. Therefore, your response to prevention and safeguarding issues must change, too.
Get out and meet different communities, groups and services so that your insight and knowledge of emerging issues comes from having strong connections to local people and communities and not just from data. Councillors have an important role here in picking up local community intelligence and sharing this with officers.
Things can go wrong and it is important to learn from what has happened. Safeguarding Adults Boards are responsible for safeguarding adults reviews (SARs), which
Promote effective learning and improvement action to prevent future deaths or serious harm occurring again.
Local authorities are responsible for co-ordinating SARs when someone with care and support needs dies as a result of neglect or abuse and there is a concern the local authority or its partners could have done more to protect them. The statutory guidance adds a SAR should not ‘…hold any individual or organisation to account’, but this is increasingly difficult when social media in particular can instantly circulate stories that are biased, inflammatory or not based on the full facts.
In these, thankfully rare, situations, you must maintain a clear view of how to manage the responsibilities of transparency, openness, learning and ensuring fairness, alongside the reputational risk to the council and the impact on individuals involved.
In the most difficult of circumstances, you will need the specialist advice of both your communications and legal services, so do not be afraid to call on them. Clearly defining the terms of reference for a SAR and being selective over the appropriate appointment of an independent chair and author are actions you can take to minimise the risk of difficulties emerging.
Sometimes the threshold for a full SAR may not be met, but it may still be appropriate to arrange a learning event or other mechanism to draw out and implement identified improvement areas. This may also be an opportunity to draw local insights from SARs of national importance and relevant new case law.
If you think you need to undertake a diagnostic process to identify improvements in your local safeguarding arrangements, the Local Government Association has an ‘Adult Safeguarding Improvement Tool’, which can be completed for this purpose.
There may be different areas for performance focus in different councils, but the table here [link to table in Ideas, information and innovation: find out more section] provides a suggested set of indicators that could help you to decide if local arrangements are robust or need to be improved. You will have to consider local factors to determine the ‘indicative good performance’ for your local area.