Purpose of the board
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 safeguarding 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
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.
What impact did the Board make in 2024-25?
The Boards Strategic Plan sets out the priority areas over the next three years. To deliver those priorities several annual objectives are agreed. What we have done to achieve our objectives for 2024-25 are set out below:
Ensure the delivery of effective safeguarding services, with a focus on Making Safeguarding Personal, informed by the voice of adults who are at risk of neglect and abuse.
Mental capacity audit: Cheshire West and Chester Safeguarding Adults Board undertook an audit to understand more about mental capacity in Cheshire West and Chester. The audit was completed in Quarter 4, 2024-25.
Recommendations from the audit include:
- Cheshire West and Chester SAB to set up an MCA subgroup to consider the multi-agency recommendations, particularly around training
- train the trainer model used to deliver MCA training – option for this to be free at the point of delivery
- targeted multi-agency training on MCA to include the interface with other legislation such as the MHA and Care Act
- Mental Capacity assessment checklist for adult social care managers prior to approval of assessment
- improved recording in relation to defensible decision making, and record of actions. To be monitored via audit led by practice development leads and MCA/DoLs practice manager. Assurance in respect of partner agencies to be led by the Safeguarding Adults Board
- improvements in understanding around recording of BI decisions and BI meetings. For the local authority, to be monitored via audit led by practice development leads and MCA/DoLs practice manager. Assurance in respect of partner agencies to be led by the Safeguarding Adults Board
- capacity assessments to be decision-specific and formally recorded and to include a record of executive capacity
- a personalised approach to supporting the person, based on their needs rather than their diagnosed health conditions
- the individual’s views and wishes to be captured and recorded at each assessment
- the individual to be provided with the relevant information, to ensure that the assessment stands up to legal scrutiny
- all partners to clearly evidence that the individual has been involved in decision making, with use of an advocate where necessary
- referrals to advocacy to be made in a timely manner to ensure that advocates are involved at the right time
- all partners to ensure that Best Interest processes are followed and Best Interest decisions clearly recorded
- Mental Capacity Act policies and procedures to be reviewed regularly to ensure relevance to current practice
- use of information sharing agreements to ensure that multi-agency information sharing is effective, with particular reference to hospital discharge
Our Service User group produced an easy read executive summary of our Annual Report. The partners provide evidence of Making Safeguarding Personal via the Data Scorecard submitted to our Quality Assurance group. This is also evidenced by case studies submitted to the board, for example in the annual report.
Maximise the impact of delivering safeguarding services, in collaboration with other key partners (including the Safeguarding Children’s Partnership), to develop a cross-cutting approach to safeguarding adults, children and families at risk of neglect and abuse.
Our Impact -
We work closely with the Safeguarding Children’s Partnership, Community Safety Partnership and the Domestic Abuse Board with representatives attending the Board and a joint executive with children’s which has led to effective collaboration between partners which has resulted in improved outcomes for service users through maximising the impact of resources and reduced duplication of work or missed opportunities.
We have also worked with our Pan Cheshire colleagues to share learning from Safeguarding Adult Reviews and joint activities.
Raise awareness of safeguarding adults during the cost-of-living crisis and the increasing demands of service providers.
Our Impact - We offer a range of safeguarding training courses which has led to increased skills and knowledge for partners resulting in more effective safeguarding services and improved outcomes for service users, this has been demonstrated due to the number of increased safeguarding concerns.
We continued to produce regular e-bulletins to ensure people understand the impact of the work of our partners of the Board who provide content for the e-bulletin, and we also produce a quarterly training bulletin for partners so that people know what training is on offer and any learning updates or changes.
The website continues to be developed with revised policies and guidance updated, increased training opportunities and any safeguarding updates both locally and nationally. The highest number of views are in relation to the training page and the professionals area, where policies and procedures can be located.
To continuously improve the effectiveness and culture of the Board, through a range of development tools, including self-assessment, peer review and benchmarking.
Our Impact - We held our annual board development day on 29th January 2025. The focus of the day was to look at making an impact in 2024-25 – setting our strategic priorities and annual objectives. Each agency presented their actions from SARs, and these were reviewed. The first part of our Development Day related to the commencement of an important part of our governance function - our business planning year for 2024-25. The Development Day represents a key part of that process as it represents the first ‘formal’ consultation event of the annual planning cycle, with Board members and partners helping to identify the key priorities for the coming year and what actions we can take to achieve them, so that they have the maximum impact for service users, safeguarding professionals and the wider community of Cheshire West. The areas we would like to focus on for development include:
- continuing to learn from Safeguarding Adult Reviews, measuring the impact of learning and ensuring clear lines of accountability and action owners
- understanding more about mental capacity in the context of self neglect
- to continue to raise awareness about adult safeguarding with the public and consider the best communication methods to engage with the diverse population of Cheshire West and Chester
As well as providing focus for the Board’s activities, we also carry out this process as part of our statutory requirements, set out in the Care Act 2014. We are required to set our Strategic Priorities and, in order to deliver those Priorities, develop a number of Annual Objectives to deliver those priorities in the following 12 months - monitored through our Annual Business Plan which is presented at our Board meetings.
There have been many achievements over the year and the Development day focused also focused on what the board and partners are proud of. This included:
- gaining insight, experience and input from the voice of lived experience via the board’s service user group
- the strong partnership representation and multidisciplinary approach of the hoarding alliance which was an initiative stemming from the board and which is having a positive impact on local people
- professional curiosity is being embedded into practice
- joint working across partnerships such as the safeguarding children’s partnership, community safety partnership and domestic abuse partnership
All presentations are available on the LSAB section of the website.
We took part in the National Safeguarding Adults Week which ran from the 17 to the 21 of November 2025. The theme for the week was ‘Prevention: Act before Abuse. The week is a time for organisations to come together to raise awareness of important safeguarding issues. The aim is to highlight key safeguarding issues, facilitate conversations and raise awareness of safeguarding best practice.
Partners undertook a range of activities within their settings and a variety of events and useful resources including webinars was promoted.