Theme three - how we keep people safe

Our strengths

• Our centralised safeguarding team ensures consistent decision making, risk assessment and coordination of complex enquiries and organisational abuse. They are a dedicated and experienced workforce from a range of professional backgrounds, for example, social work, police, sexual violence, mental health, health and this gives the team the depth of knowledge and experience to be able to triage cases quickly.
• We have a mature and well supported Adults Safeguarding Board with stable membership.  Support from partners contributes to building strong partnerships across the safeguarding landscape that share information, resources and expertise e.g. The Independent Chair of GSAB is a member of Safer Gloucestershire[i], which joins together a number of the Community Safety Partnerships. The profile of adult safeguarding in this forum helps explore our safeguarding role in the wider community.
• Our Single Point of Access Team ensures feedback on safeguarding referrals is provided to professionals in a timely manner.
• Our Safeguarding portal for professionals provides an easier electronic route for professionals to report 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
• We have good relationships with our system partners and agencies to share intelligence and concerns to keep people safe e.g. our Fire Safety Development Subgroup of our Safeguarding Adults Board.

Priorities for improvement

• Establish a means of oversight across the whole safeguarding response pathway, including consideration of resources and use of data and technology.
• Timeliness in decision making regarding whether the section 42 criteria are met by the central safeguarding team is a known issue and has been verified in recent audits. This is due to increase in established safeguarding concerns as a result of the implementation of the Safeguarding SPA and the growing complexity of cases referred to safeguarding.
• Ensuring the voices of people from all communities across Gloucestershire are heard and responded to, and improving how we work with people with complex needs is outlined in our three-year strategic plan for GSAB.
• Develop a response to the challenges in the safeguarding response when individuals have Mental Health or Continuing Health Care needs, to achieve effective risk management.
• Develop our approach to working with people with lived experience of safeguarding processes to help us to improve person centredness in our safeguarding work.

Key statistics

We work with people to understand what being safe means to them and work with our partners to develop the best way to achieve this concentrating on improving people’s lives while protecting their right to live in safety, free from bullying, harassment, abuse, discrimination, avoidable harm, and neglect, we make sure we share concerns quickly and appropriately. Further examples of how we can demonstrate compliance against this quality statement are available in appendix 8.

The Safeguarding Team

The Safeguarding team is responsible for information gathering and decision making on whether a concern meets the criteria for a Section 42 enquiry, they also co-ordinate all organisational abuse concerns, provide advice and support to professionals, chair complex safeguarding meetings and maintain oversight of enquiries which are caused to be made by other agencies. There are robust links between the safeguarding team, commissioning, and quality teams and the CQC. The team has adopted the LGA/ADASS “making decisions” document as a framework for their decision-making. The specialist safeguarding team are available to provide expert advice and guidance as well monitoring and providing quality assurance of all enquiries “caused” to other agencies. Where a Section 42 Enquiry is indicated the safeguarding team pass to the relevant Adult Social Care operational locality teams (including the Hospital Social work Team) who will allocate a social worker to undertake the enquiry. The enquiry is supported, supervised and quality assured and signed off by a Social Work Manager.

Gloucestershire Safeguarding Adults Board

The Gloucestershire Safeguarding Adults Board (GSAB) meets quarterly and manages its work through a range of subgroups with involvement from a range of partners across Gloucestershire including Health, Police, District Councils, and Voluntary Sector. Key safeguarding risks and issues are identified through contributions from partners and through GSAB annual self-assessment audits and go through a peer challenge process with partners. The GSAB meetings offer an opportunity for members to seek assurance and challenge, with meetings being organised on themes and learning shared for professionals on the GSAB website.

Statement from independent chair of Gloucestershire Safeguarding Adults Board

“Gloucestershire has had a safeguarding adults board in place since 2009, which reflects the strong ongoing commitment to safeguarding adults within the county. Much has been done over the years to strengthen and raise awareness of what constitutes abuse and neglect, and how to respond to it. Since its inception the board has aspired and striven to protect and safeguard some of the most vulnerable members of our community through our strategic plans and the various sub groups, that sit under the Board.

We have taken every opportunity to learn through the learning events and safeguarding adult reviews that we have undertaken locally and accessed through the National network. The assurance process is a real opportunity to raise further awareness of adult safeguarding and to identify areas where we can make sustainable and continuous improvement. This includes hearing the voices of those individuals who come into contact with professionals and the voluntary and community sector through safeguarding activity and the way we ensure that we can evidence the positive impact we are making through our data and quality assurance processes.”

Safeguarding Adults Reviews (SARs)

Safeguarding Adults Reviews[i] are publicised across the partnership and published on our website in full (unless by exception it should not be published). As part of the SAR where possible the views of the person, their families and carers are collated and helps to shape the findings and recommendations.

Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS)

We have a dedicated, highly skilled team who manage DoLS applications.  We have robust mechanisms in place to check the quality of DoLS work in terms of appropriate prioritisation (by experience assessor leads) and assessments undertaken. The team has improved its arrangements for monitoring the waiting list with the introduction of DoLS Co-ordinator posts with the aim of ensuring that the people most in need of the protections offered by the DoLS are prioritised for assessment and authorisation.

Fire Safety Development Subgroup of GSAB

The Fire Safety Development subgroup of GSAB was set up in in 2014 response to an unusually high number of fire fatalities in the preceding year. This is a multi-agency group which focuses on minimising risks and learning from near mises/ fire fatalities by producing and implementing fire safety action plans.

Hoarding Forum

This includes people with lived experience of hoarding to identify ways of working more effectively with people who are at risk due to hoarding. In another initiative, in response to fuel poverty and the cost-of-living crisis the group has arranged provision of free slow cookers/heated fire-retardant blankets to people living with these issues. Working as a system we will be holding a Gloucestershire Hoarding Awareness Day in April with the Fire service, housing association, Hoarding UK, Environmental Health etc to share presentations, answer questions and talk about our multi-agency approach.

PREVENT

We recognise the importance of Adult Social Care contributing to work taken to safeguard vulnerable people at risk of radicalisation. Our teams support the multi-agency PREVENT agenda in Gloucestershire.

Self-neglect

We have a focus on self-neglect as part of our strategic plan and have held a number of professional development opportunities for staff.  We have a best practice guidance to support staff.  We are planning to introduce a Multi-Agency Risk Management (MARM) framework this year, as we have identified that there is a growing number of individuals who do not meet the criteria for a Section 42 Enquiry, however, are at high risk of serious harm.  This will be co-ordinated by a dedicated post within the Safeguarding Adults team.