Local Safeguarding Adults Board Strategic Plan 2021-2024
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.
Ensuring Safeguarding services are delivered effectively and professionally, with making safeguarding personal at the heart of how those services are delivered. This priority continues to be relevant, so that the Board’s focus on adult safeguarding remains firmly on the needs and expectations of the individual at risk.
Ensuring that there are effective governance, scrutiny and business processes in place to ensure that the safety and well-being of adults who are subject to, or at risk of, abuse and neglect is at the heart of Board members organisational priorities. This includes ensuring that the findings from Safeguarding Adult Reviews published during 2022-23 and other key areas of Practice improvement are implemented. The Board will continue to develop and strengthen its governance arrangements, it is important to maintain the focus on systems and processes.
We will promote safeguarding adults in the community by listening to their concerns and raising awareness to prevent neglect and abuse before it happens, with a focus on diverse, isolated and under-represented communities.
It is critical that effective communication and engagement with the community is maintained and that the concerns of adults at risk of abuse and neglect are listened to. We will also continue to work with other key groups, committees and partners, to build on our effective partnerships.
We will continue to deliver training and development in areas where awareness and understanding needs to be improved.
Immediate action
We have agreed a number of shared objectives over the next year.
To further implement making safeguarding personal by focusing on supporting adults to achieve the outcomes they want - led by Cheshire Centre for Independent Living.
To improve our response to understanding and managing self-neglect needs - led by Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service.
Ensuring a think family response to children and families where substance misuse, domestic abuse, learning disability and mental health problems are a feature of the family environment - led by local authority children and adult services.
Improve communication from the board - led by the Board's Business Team.
How will we know if we have achieved our objectives?
We will measure our progress and achievements through our Business Plan.
What we will do
Produce easy read information to support adults with care and support needs in understanding the safeguarding process and how they can have a say on what outcomes they want.
How we will do it
Engage with service users to produce the information.
Who will do it?
Led by Service User Involvement Group.
How we will measure it
Increased satisfaction rates of outcomes being met.
What we will do
Establish a consistent approach to self-neglect needs by producing a strategy which sets out categories, criteria, tools for identification and assessment.
How we will do it
Through a task and finish group.
Who will do it?
Led by Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service.
How we will measure it
Carry out a multi-agency audit of self-neglect.
What we will do
We will raise awareness of the 'think family' principles.
How we will do it
We will add the 'think family' principles in the multi-agency basic awareness training for both adults and children.
Who will do it?
Led by the Local Authority.
How we will measure it
Increase in referrals to adult social care from services which are primarily for children, and vice versa.
What we will do
- Update and redesign the website to ensure it is accessible and user friendly with relevant and useful information
- Set up and use social media - Twitter
- Produce a quarterly bulletin
- Deliver a conference to engage our wider partners in the work of the Board
- Ensure safeguarding training is well co-ordinated across partners, cost effective and having an impact on practitioners in the safeguarding system
- Design and deliver a suite of multi-agency safeguarding courses
- Deliver a conference on managing organisational abuse to our care providers
- Reviewing and embedding the partnership governance arrangements across Cheshire west so that the LSAB receives relevant information in a timely fashion
How we will do it
- Commissioning the web team
- Develop safeguarding training standards and charging policy
- Develop training pool of multi-agency practitioners to deliver training on behalf of the LSAB, design and commission courses.
Who will do it
Led by the Boards Business Team
How we will measure it
- Increased numbers of users on our website, Twitter and registering to receive the bulletin
- Measuring the impact of the conference and training from feedback from staff attending