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 2022-23?
The Boards Strategic Plan 2020-23 sets out the priority areas over the next 3 years. To deliver those priorities several annual objectives are agreed. What we have done to achieve our objectives for 2022-23 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.
Domestic Abuse Audit September 2022, increased understanding of key issues affecting service user. The theme of the audit was Adults who are aged 65 and over who have been subjected to Domestic Abuse. This audit was chosen for the following reasons: -
- The LSAB conference in June 2022 focused on domestic abuse and older people and highlighted those older adults who experienced domestic abuse were sometimes treated differently based on age and perceptions.
- The QA subgroup felt that an audit would provide us with a local picture of our response to people who experience domestic abuse as an older person.
- Domestic Abuse covers both Adults and Children’s services, the audit will enable a good overview.
Our Service User group produced an easy read executive summary of our Annual Report and updated the safeguarding booklet with additional forms of abuse which improves practice by ensuring we are providing people with information about safeguarding in an accessible format so that they can understand forms of abuse and what they can do.
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. Other examples are Cheshire Police and the Domestic Abuse Board Facebook seminars, which allow the public to understand Domestic Abuse in more detail, where to go for support and assistance and these seminars usually attract approximately 2,000 views per seminar.
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 produce and All Age Exploitation Strategy and joint activities as part of Adult Safeguarding Week along with joining up and sharing good practice around Safeguarding Adult Reviews.
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 & 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 professional’s 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 boards development day in May 2022, the focus of the day was to look at our journey over the last two years and Covid recovery, getting the basics right and partnership, leadership and governance as well as priorities for 2022/23. Our objectives included:
- Self-assessment development day ‘Check in and challenge’ for Board members.
- Provide an opportunity to reflect on the previous year’s achievements.
- Provide an opportunity to consider the impact of Covid-19 on the Board and the Boards priorities.
- Consider how to proceed in the Covid-19 recovery phase.
- Consider future challenges, including Care Quality Commission assurance regime.
- Reflect on partnership leadership style and governance.
The impact of the day allowed us to identify what we are doing well, what else do we need to do and what do we need to get good at for the future Care Quality Commission inspection which formed part of our ongoing business plan.
All presentations are available on the LSAB section of the website.
We matter too
The We Matter Too report was sent out from the National Chairs Network and examines the disproportionate incidents of domestic abuse to people with disabilities, focusing on the age range of 16-25 years. A task and finish group was convened to review the report to provide insight and discussion and an action plan had been created to ensure we respond to the needs of people with disabilities who experience domestic abuse.
We held an Adult Safeguarding & Dignity Awards ceremony which provided us with an opportunity to celebrate and recognise good practice in organisations, teams, individuals, and volunteers with regards to supporting and protecting adults at risk from abuse, harm or exploitation. All the nominees were worthy winners but the ones the judges felt went the extra mile to support and protect adults at risk was: -
- Team of the year – (two recipients) Cheshire Wirral Partnership & Cheshire West and Chester Adult Safeguarding Unit
- Respect and Dignity - Siobhan Moffit-Lunt, Disability Positive
- Outstanding Contribution - Dr Andy George, Mid Cheshire Hospital Trust
- Public Community Award - St Werburgh’s Medical Practice for the Homeless
- Special Recognition - Paula Foster Local Safeguarding Adults Board & Judith Griffiths, Surecare
- Leadership and Management - Paula Wedd, NHS Cheshire & Merseyside Integrated Care Board
- Service User Award - Advocacy Team, Disability Positive
- Partnership Working - Kim Christopher, Community Safety Team, Cheshire West and Chester Council.
More details about the winners can be found on our website LSAB Safeguarding and Dignity Awards
We took part in the National Safeguarding Adults Week which ran from the 21 to the 27 November 2022. The theme for the week was ‘Responding to Contemporary Safeguarding Challenges’. 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 focusing on various forms of abuse and exploitation was promoted.