Our vision is to promote partnership working by working together to help people feel safe and free from abuse and neglect.

Our mission is to put the adult at risk of abuse at the heart of everything we do.

What is Safeguarding?

Safeguarding means protecting people's health, wellbeing and human rights and enabling them to live free from harm, abuse and neglect. The work of the Board is driven by its vision to promote partnership working by working together to help people feel safe and free from abuse and neglect.

Who we are

The Safeguarding Adults Board (SAB) is a multi-agency partnership which has statutory functions under the Care Act 2014. Our main focus is to ensure that safeguarding arrangements in the borough work effectively so that adults at risk are able to live their lives free from abuse or neglect.

An 'adult at risk' is a person aged 18 or over who has needs for care and support and as a result of those needs is unable to protect themselves from either the risk of, or the experience of abuse or neglect (in this report we will call an adult at risk 'the adult').

What we do

Our overall purpose is to help and safeguard adults with care and support needs. The Board ensure that, locally, abuse is prevented and that, when it does occur, partners respond in line with the needs and wishes of the person experiencing harm.

A key role of the Board is to ensure that there is a partnership approach to delivering safeguarding services by promoting collaboration between all the partners for effective communication, information sharing and awareness raising.

Our aims

Working together and with adults at risk of abuse the Board aims to ensure people are:

safe and able to protect themselves from abuse and neglect
treated fairly and with dignity and respect
protected when they need to be
able to easily get the support, protection and services that they need.

How we work

The Board is made up of the three Statutory Agencies (Local Authority, Clinical Commissioning Group and the Police),who along with other key partner agencies make up the membership of the Board. There is a business team which supports the Board whom are an Independent Chair, a Board Manager, an Administrator and a Quality Assurance Officer.

There is an Executive group and several subgroups who meet on a quarterly basis. Each group has its own work plan based on the strategic priorities of the Board and provides regular updates in respect of progress.

The Board also works with other strategic partners which include the Safeguarding Children Partnership and the Community Safety Partnership who focus on joined up working on strategic priorities. The diagram sets out the partnership structure with the groups highlighted in green being joint areas of work across adults and children.

Board with Independent Chair

Executive
Service User Involvement Group (Community Group)
Safeguarding Adult Reviews Panel
Quality Assurance Group
Channel Group
Training and Development Hub

Our Strategic Statement - what we plan to do

We will work together with partner organisations and people in our communities so that adults can live the best lives they can with their wellbeing and rights being supported, safe from abuse and neglect.

Our work will follow the six Safeguarding Principles:

Accountability - accountability and transparency in delivering safeguarding
Partnership - providing local solutions through services working with communities
Prevention - it is better to take action before harm occurs
Proportionality - proportionate and least intrusive response appropriate to the risk presented
Protection - support and protection for those in greatest need
Empowerment - promoting person-led decisions and informed consent

How are we going to do this?

The Care Act 2014 sets out the overarching objective of a SAB is to assure itself that local safeguarding arrangements and partners act to help and protect adults in its area who:

have needs for care and support (whether or not the local authority is meeting any of those needs) and;
are experiencing, or at risk of, abuse or neglect; and
as a result of those care and support needs are unable to protect themselves from either the risk of, or the experience of abuse or neglect.

Our strategic priorities

This plan sets out how we intend to deliver our services over the coming years. We will review this plan yearly to respond to local needs. We will focus on three areas of equal importance, which will be our strategic priorities. We will continue to work without partners to make sure that by 2024 they are achieved.

It is proposed that the high-level strategic priorities remain unchanged to continue to the progress we have made over the last 12 months. These Priorities remain relevant to the activity of the Board and represent a clear framework on which to assess progress. They form a comprehensive framework that captures all the key functions of the Board, focusing on three areas of equal importance; effective operational delivery; good governance; and active communication & community engagement.

Whilst the Strategic Priorities effectively remain the same, it is important to demonstrate that each has been properly reviewed in the context of the current operating environment. Each priority is set out below together with the rationale for its selections.

Adult social care

Search services and contact us

Adults at risk

Enabling Great Lives: Our Adult Social Care Strategy for 2024-28

Adult social care services

Market Position Statement 2023 - 2033

Local Safeguarding Adults Board (LSAB)

Keeping safe

Shopmobility

Living with a disability

Health and wellbeing

Related information