Bradford Safeguarding Adults Board

What does this mean?

People should be supported and encouraged to make their own decisions. This should be done by:

• making services more personal
• giving people choice and control over decisions
• asking people what they want the outcome to be

What does this mean for the adult?

You are asked what you want to happen and services plan safeguarding round this.

What does this mean?

Organisations should work together to stop abuse before it happens by:

• raising awareness about abuse and neglect
• training staff
• making sure clear, simple and accessible information is available about abuse and where people can get help

What does this mean for the adult?

You will get clear and simple information about what abuse is and who to ask for help.

What does this mean?

When dealing with abuse situations services must ensure that they always think about the risk. Any response should be appropriate to the risk presented. Services must respect the person, think about what is best for them and only get involved as much as needed.

What does this mean for the adult?

Services think about what is best for you and only get involved when they need to.

What does this mean?

Organisations must ensure that they know what to do when abuse has happened by:

• what to do if there are concerns
• how to stop the abuse
• how to offer help and support for people who are at risk

What does this mean for the adult?

You can get help and support to tell people about abuse and can get involved in the safeguarding as much or as little as you want.

What does this mean?

Organisations should work in partnership with each other and local communities. Local people also have a part to play in preventing, detecting and reporting abuse.

What does this mean for the adult?

Staff look after your personal information and only share it when this helps to keep you safe.

What does this mean?

Safeguarding is everybody’s business. Everyone must accept that we are all accountable as individuals, services and as organisations.

Roles and responsibilities must be clear so that people can see and check how safeguarding is done.

What does this mean for the adult?

You know what all the different people should do to keep you safe.

Priority One – Improve Awareness of Adult Safeguarding Across All Communities and Partner Organisations

Desired Outcome: People have access to clear and simple information about abuse and neglect and they are confident to report it.

People will say: “I receive clear and simple information about what abuse and neglect is, how to recognise the signs that this occurring and what I can do to seek help.”

 What we will do to deliver this priority:

1. Renew and strengthen all communications materials, including web presence, social media, comms networks.
2. Gather evidence from our diverse communities to demonstrate that they understand what safeguarding is and how they can access support via focus groups, surveys.
3. Gather evidence of awareness and understanding of adult safeguarding duties amongst staff across the partnership, via focus groups and surveys.
4. Offer opportunities for multi-agency training, learning and development around safeguarding adults available to staff in all partner agencies, as appropriate to their role.
5. Publish an annual report that takes into account the work of partners and what people have said about their lived experiences of safeguarding services/processes.
6. Enhance our intelligence dashboard regarding adult safeguarding, with the aim to increase the SAB’s understanding of prevalence of abuse and neglect locally that builds up a picture over time – with actions flowing into our annual business plan and sub-groups, holding partners to account, and improving the outcomes for adults at risk in the Bradford District.

Priority Two – Prevention of Abuse and Neglect

Desired Outcome: Adults at risk are identified early and have their needs met promptly and effectively.

People will say: “I feel safe and am supported to understand and manage any risks.”

What we will do to deliver this priority:

1. Publicise our local safeguarding plans, policies, and procedures, including multi agency policies – setting out the role, responsibility, and accountability for each agency and professional group.
2. Protect people from abuse and neglect by identifying the key risks to adults at risk and putting in place campaigns, processes, and policies to prevent abuse or neglect.
3. Identify the best ways to reach people for whom there may be blocks to accessing information about safeguarding.
4. Implementing a multi-agency training strategy and a revised training programme, informed by current and future training needs based on local and national learning from SARs, legal frameworks /changes and additions and the work of BSAB.
5. Show examples of working in partnership to reduce or eliminate abuse and neglect in housing, homelessness, adults at risk of exploitation, domestic abuse and PREVENT.
6. The new Independent Chair will review our governance with the Partnership Business Unit to ensure accountability for SAB compliance in relation to our Care Act duties.
7. Strengthen the assurance sought from SAB partners that they have put learning, resources, policies, and procedures into practice. This includes undertaking multi-agency audits and an external peer review.
8. Ensure our SAR process facilitates identification and application of key learning, including providing assurance to the board that learning from SARs by partners has occurred, evaluated and practice changed.

Priority Three – Engagement and Making Safeguarding Personal

Desired Outcome: Adults at risk and practitioners feel empowered for their voices to be heard in safeguarding practice and policy development.

People will say: “I am asked what I want as my outcomes from the safeguarding process and these directly inform what happens” and “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.”

What we will do to deliver this priority:

1. Gather feedback from people who have lived experience of the safeguarding process on whether they understood the safeguarding process, felt listened to, and their desired outcome has been reached (via outcomes-based questions based on six safeguarding principles ‘I statements’) –.
2. Gather feedback from family, carers, advocates, and wider family members of the person at risk (with their consent) about whether they understood the safeguarding process, felt the person was listened to, and feel the person's desired outcome was reached (via outcomes-based questions)
3. Seek the voices of wider citizen groups/local communities so that voices of people in our communities are heard and inform our work and continue to support the Safeguarding Voice Group.
4. Demonstrate how data collated from safeguarding notifications is used to inform and improve practice e.g., response time, action, outcome, focus on diversity and inclusion, regular audits of practice and information sharing systems including feedback to partners – to improve our practice.