Safeguarding Adults

Safeguarding adults is about protecting those at risk of harm. It involves identifying abuse and acting whenever someone is being harmed. The Department of Health defines a vulnerable adult as a person aged 18 years or over who is or may be in need of community care services by reason of mental or other disability, age or illness, and who is or may be unable to take care of him or herself, or unable to protect him or herself against significant harm or exploitation. Safeguarding is everybody’s business.

An adult at risk is an adult who:

• needs care and support, whether or not the council provides it
• is experiencing, or at risk of, abuse or neglect
• can’t protect themselves from abuse or neglect because of their care and support needs

The Keeping Bristol Safe Partnership is a group of organisations working together to keep adults, children and communities safe across Bristol. The Keeping Adults Safe Delivery Group focuses on adults within the partnership. Together they create polices to help people to report, investigate and stop abuse, supported by Adult Care Team Managers.

Background

The Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018 document is a government document that looks at the best ways to keep children safe. In this document, the government have stated that the previous Local Children’s Safeguarding Boards, the Local Adult’s Safeguarding Boards and Community Safety Partnerships needed to merge in order to work together more effectively. These three groups are now one group called the Keeping Bristol Safe Partnership. The Keeping Bristol Safe Partnership is split into smaller groups to carry out most of the work, called Keeping Children Safe, Keeping Adults Safe and Keeping Communities Safe. The Keeping Adults Safe Delivery Group is made up of people from lots of different areas of adult care and have to report back to the Keeping Bristol Safe Partnership. The KAS delivery group have to follow the Care Act 2014 in their work and use this as a baseline for the work they do for the KBSP.

Role

The KAS objectives include ensuring that partners in Bristol work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of Adults in Bristol as set out in Multi Agency Statutory Guidance and the Care Act 2014, and drive continuous improvement in outcomes to reduce risk of harm to adults in Bristol.

Some of the responsibilities of the KAS include:

• Undertake a Strategic Adult Safeguarding Needs Assessment and identify key Adult Safeguarding Priorities for Bristol
• Maintain a Business Plan, based on identified Adult Safeguarding priorities and respond to relevant actions / activity to deliver the Board strategic priorities.
• Monitor progress against the action plan and report to the Board by exception
• Supply a Keeping Adults Safe Safeguarding submission to the Board’s 12 monthly report
• Provide the Board with a quarterly Adults Safeguarding Dashboard drawing on quality and performance data across the partnership

Another responsibility of LSAB is to undertake Safeguarding Adult Reviews (SAR). The KBSP Executive group is responsible for the decision making around agreeing and commissioning SARs and the KAS develops and delivers against the appropriate actions from national and local reviews. You can read more about these reviews on the SAR page.

Relevant legislation and documents

The requirements for the LSAB (KBSP / KAS) laid out by the government are provided in the Care Act 2014.

The KAS Business Plan will be published here once available.