Agenda item

Sandie Keene, Independent Chair of Rotherham Safeguarding Adult Board, presented the Board’s 2015-16 annual report in accordance with the Care Act 2014.

Whilst good progress had been made there was still much to do.  It was the Board’s aim to ensure that everyone in the Borough shared its zero tolerance of neglect and abuse of individuals with care and support needs whether in a family, community or care setting.

The key priorities for 2016-18 were:-

-          All organisations and the wider community work together to prevent abuse, exploitation or neglect wherever possible

-          Where abuse does occur we will safeguard the rights of people, support the individual and reduce the risk of further abuse to them or to other vulnerable adults

-          Where abuse does occur, enable access to appropriate services and have increased access to justice while focussing on outcomes of people

-          Staff in organisations across the partnership have the knowledge, skills and resources to raise standards to enable them to prevent abuse or to respond to it quickly and appropriately

-          The whole community understands that abuse is not acceptable and that it is ‘Everybody’s business’

Sandie highlighted:-

-          The Board had been reconstituted and relaunched in 2015 and had reviewed its membership and agreed its priorities

-          There had been 2,556 concerns/alerts received in 2015.  Of those 579 concerns were investigated further and a plan in place to protect the individuals concerned to prevent further abuse and ensure that the outcomes desired by the individual were met

-          The need for proper performance management and to look at the quality of the work across agencies

-          Refocussing of resources had enable a new Safeguarding Service Manager from within the establishment to be allocated

-          Good attendance and commitment from all agencies at the Board

-          Strategy, Constitution and Mission Statement published

-          Emerging Safeguarding Adult Reviews of historical cases – 3 Reviews commissioned

-          Discussion regarding creation of a budget for 2017-18 with possible contributions from agencies

-          Abuse occurred in care settings as well as in people’s homes

-          Future contribution to the national work taking place looking at people with Learning Disabilities who died an untimely death

Discussion ensued on the report with the following issues raised/clarified:-

·           Was performance information available in a timely way to support the work of the Board?  This had been raised with the Chief Executive and there was now a much more timely response.

·           What measures and interventions led to an improvement in standards of care and safety?  This was with regard to the Council’s Contract Commissioning Team and contract quality rather than Safeguarding.  If there was a Safeguarding enquiry it would be followed up as Social Worker intervention to make sure that things were resolved.

·           Why had 306 individuals not been assessed under the Mental Capacity Act and Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards?  The issue of the backlog had occurred because of a change in the interpretation of the Law and exponentially increased the numbers for the Local Authority.  This had led to a backlog in assessments.  The Board had requested that some work be carried out to reduce this.  National guidance had been published by ADASS on prioritisation of assessments and the Board had been assured that all the cases had been through an initial assessment to identify risk and to make sure that the most appropriate people were prioritised.  However, from the Board’s perspective, it was unsatisfactory that the numbers were not coming down and needed to be reduced.

·           Why had no-one from the Police or Probation Services attended any training in 2015/16?  The training within the Police Force was quite robust and they felt that, because of their shift patterns and the specific training that Police Officers undertook, their training was sufficient. 

The Probation Service had its own training programme.  The Board’s Training Sub-Group had examined training courses that would be particularly applicable to a multi-agency approach and when it would expect the Police or Probation involvement.

·           How do agencies work with people who were ‘self-neglecting’ but may have capacity to make decision to try and stop them from slipping through the net?  From a practical point of view, if someone had the capacity to make the decisions there was very little that could be done other than an agency attempting to get alongside that person and perhaps influence the decisions they were making.  As far as agencies were concerned they needed to come together regularly to discuss the situation/risks and examine what might be able to be done in order to ensure that they had given it every consideration possible.   There needed to be robust case management when the individuals were known to agencies. 

Little could be done with regard to influencing people’s decisions if agencies had made sure that the individual had full awareness of the consequences of the decision.  Predictably there were some cases nationally that fell within this category that had been subject to Safeguarding Reviews and the learning therefrom put into practice for the people of Rotherham. 

·           Did the Local Authority and its partners have things in place that could deal with self-neglect?  There were things in place at the moment.  A piece of work was being conducted around tracking people into Service, what they could do to support themselves or go to the community for extra support if needed.  Work was also taking place with Mental Health with regard to what could be done e.g. people learning new skills to give them the opportunity to talk about their issues.  It was hoped to align workers with the Mental Health Trust to boost capacity.

·           Was there a reason for the high percentage of medication concerns in the residential nursing setting?  The Authority had been carrying out some bespoke work with organisations and individual homes about how to raise the quality from a contract commissioning point of view.

·           Was there a reason for the high percentage of staffing vacancies in the residential nursing setting?  The figures quoted in the report were national statistics.  There was a national shortage of qualified nursing staff in nursing homes with a number of homes deregistering due to the lack of staff.

Because of the issues, the Board felt it would be more than helpful to have a representative on the Board from the independent sector, either residential, nursing or domiciliary care which would strengthen the participation.

·           Was there a representative from Housing on the Board?  Yes however it did not include the private sector at the moment.

·           How confident was the Board with regard to the level of Learning Disability and Autism training within Adult Social Care?  As a Board it did not share the level of training and specific elements of either Health Care or Social Care.  There had been concern within the Council about Learning Disability and Safeguarding and some restructuring had been undertaken in terms of addressing some of those concerns. 

·           How confident was the Board that the Making Safeguarding Personal Agenda across the Safeguarding Service would be fully implemented and embedded?  There had been considerable work done across Rotherham and there was a specific sub-group looking at it which was very much around the principles of making Safeguarding transparent and asking people at the beginning of the process what they wanted to achieve and at the end of the process ascertain if it had been achieved. 

The aim was to make Safeguarding personal and roll it out across Adult Social Care.  All Social Care assessors and staff, including all staff that were employed by the Council, had not only undertaken e-learning but also the e-learning for the Corporate Safeguarding.  Presentations had been made to RDaSH, The Rotherham Foundation Trust and all provider services invited to participate in the training.

·           Was there a commitment to retain the Vulnerable Persons Team?  The individuals who were clients of the Team were the most chaotic of society with some being victims of CSE.  Work was being undertaken to look at how the Service could be extended.

Resolved:-  (1)  That the report be noted.

(2)  That a representative from the independent care sector on the Rotherham Adult Safeguarding Board be supported.

(3)  That work underway to improve the provision of performance and audit information to support the work of the Adult Safeguarding Board be noted. 

(4)  That the Chair conveys to the Chief Executive this Commission’s wish that the improvements in the provision of timely performance information to support the Adult Safeguarding Board be maintained.