Safeguarding: Abuse and Vulnerable Adults

safeguarding, who a vulnerable adult is, different types of abuse, who may abuse, factors and

It emphasises the important principles to be followed when working with children and young people: settings must provide a safe and secure environment, if any children are identified as suffering from abuse or likely to suffer the appropriate action must be taken.

Safeguarding is an important part of integrated working. When professionals work together in an integrated way, they put the child at the centre of all activities to help identify their holistic needs earlier to improve their life outcomes. It is important to see safeguarding as

Safeguarding is everybody’s responsibility, and includes measures to prevent or minimise the potential for abuse occurring. Protection is considered a statutory responsibility in response to individual cases where risk of harm has been identified

It is everybody’s responsibility to safeguard children – This means every single staff member within a setting; irrelevant of what role they may have there. This also includes non-staff members, such as volunteers, student’s third-party companies (visitors, service providers etc). Each setting should therefore adopt their own safeguarding policy, of which has to be kept up to date and followed at all times.

1.3 Analyse how national and local guidelines, policies and procedures for safeguarding affect day-to-day work with children and young people

A significant element of a practitioner’s role in protecting themselves would be to read policies and procedures that are put in place to safeguard them and children or young people in their care. In a care setting a professional can protect themselves by:

Today we use the term safeguarding instead of child protection because it covers a much broader range. These changes were influenced by the first Joint Chief Inspectors’ safeguarding report 2002 and formalised in the Every Child Matters legislation outlined in the Children Act 2004. By safeguarding a child or young person we ensure they get the very best of the opportunities available to them for them to achieve the best of their potential while keeping them safe from bullying, crime, accidents, neglect and abuse.

The Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) was first established under the police act in 1997 and was launched in March 2002 due to public concern about children, young people and vulnerable adults. This was then merged in 2012 with the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) to form the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS). The Disclosure and Barring Service is a check which must be taken before any practitioner is employed to work with children, young people or vulnerable adults. It ensures that the practitioner is clear of any criminal offences such as abuse.

D2 – evaluate the role of multi-agency working to reduce the risk of abuse of adults, with reference to legal frameworks, regulations, working strategies and procedures.

Adult safeguarding was defined as, a range of activity aimed at upholding an adult’s fundamental right to be safe at the same time as respecting people’s rights to make choices. Safeguarding involves empowerment, protection and justice. In practice the term “safeguarding” is used to mean both specialist services where harm or abuse has, or is suspected to have, occurred and other activity designed to promote the wellbeing and safeguard the rights of adults. Following the Civil Service rapid evidence assessment methodology1, having formulated the questions to be addressed by the review and developed a conceptual framework, inclusions and exclusion criteria were agreed. Articles published in 2002 or later, relevant to the review questions were included. Studies were excluded if they were not relevant, for example: health focused, concerned with children rather than adults. A wide range of databases, web-sites and grey literature were searched and screened, using search terms related to adult safeguarding, adult protection and workforce, staff and training. Experts in the field were also asked to identify relevant resources and guidance. Results Overall, much of the evidence on workforce and adult safeguarding is based on a limited number of studies and cases. Much of the work reviewed was of little specific relevance to the social care workforce. Most

Risk assessments should be carried out regularly to make sure that there are no safe guard threats towards the children in the setting. Childcare settings need risk assessing for example is there entrances and exits to the building that an unauthorised person could use? Could a child leave the setting without anyone noticing? Could a child get seriously hurt due to a broken piece of equipment?

xxxx takes all safeguarding issues very importantly. Whilst we may focus on vulnerable adults we do have young member of staff who would still be classed as children for Safeguarding purposes. We also have children who visit the home. We adhere that all staff on the premises are adequately checked at employment and we risk assess the adults who live within the home to the impact that they may pose to children on the premises. Sxxxxxx adheres to the 4LSCB procedures and we have a policy in place for the staff members to follow should they be worried about any child on the premises. A child’s safety is paramount and we have a duty to protect that child. Our staff members understand abuse, signs and

1 Understand the Policies, Procedures and Practices for safe working with children and young adults

The Vetting and Barring Scheme was introduced in 2009 in order to prevent unsuitable people from working with children and vulnerable adults. Starting 2010, anyone working or volunteering with children or vulnerable adults must register with the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) who makes decisions to prevent unsuitable people from working with children and vulnerable adults. ISA uses a range of information from various sources, including the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) who processes applications for ISA registration, monitors individuals against new information and provides employers with access to people’s full criminal record and other information in order to help them make informed recruitment