Agenda item

The Kent and Medway Safeguarding Adults Board provides strategic oversight to ensure that all member agencies are working together to help keep Kent and Medway's adults safe from harm and protect their rights. One of the duties placed on SABs is that they must produce an Annual Report. The KMSAB Annual Report for 2016-17 outlines the key achievements of the Board and its component agencies as well as detailing some of the challenges faced. The report also includes details of multiagency training, Safeguarding Adult activity data and analysis and defines the key priorities for 2017-2018.

The Annual Report was endorsed by the KMSAB on 15 September 2017.

Discussion

The Interim Director of Adult Social Care introduced the report. The Board was informed that the Care Act 2014 placed Safeguarding Adults on a statutory footing and also defined the responsibilities of local authorities and key partners.

Adult safeguarding boards also had a responsibility to ensure that people who did not have specific care and support needs were also safeguarded as appropriate. The three main functions of the Kent and Medway Safeguarding Adults Board (KMSAB) were to produce a Strategic Plan, to publish an annual report and to undertake any required safeguarding adult reviews. The Strategic Plan was currently being refreshed. Work had been undertaken locally to raise the profile of Medway to ensure that it had a strong voice within KMSAB.

Key achievements of the Board had included running a safeguarding awareness week in October 2016. This had been repeated recently. The awareness raising had resulted in an increase in safeguarding referrals. There had previously been a low uptake of safeguarding multi agency training. In order to address this, a training programme had been developed and a contract awarded for delivery of the training. Previous safeguarding outcomes had been utilised to inform design of the training. The number of commissioned safeguarding adults reviews had increased. As a result, a safeguarding adult review working group had been established to help ensure that reviews were carried out consistently and lessons learned.

Medway Council achievements had included the creation of a Medway Executive group, which was a subgroup of KMSAB. The subgroup was supported by Councillors, Medway Foundation Trust, Kent and Medway Partnership Trust, Kent Police and Kent Fire and Rescue. The focus of the subgroup was on outcomes for Medway residents.

The Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS), which aims to ensure that people in care homes and hospitals are looked after in a way that does not inappropriately restrict their freedom, continued to be a risk for KMSAB. Relationships had been developed and work undertaken to ensure that restrictions put in place were properly understood by staff at all levels. The number of  DOLS applications had increased with it being anticipated that the peek had been reached. Work was required in relation to thresholds for the commencement of further investigations.

The profile of domestic abuse had been raised, with Adult Social Care being provided with oversite of domestic abuse incidents. Efforts were also being made to ensure that safeguarding activity was personal to the affected individual. A survey had been undertaken of people who had gone through safeguarding and there had been a significant increase in the uptake of safeguarding training. Staff from the Council and partner organisations were attending external training and bringing back the learning to share with colleagues.

Safeguarding concerns raised had increased by 3% while the number of people whose risk has been reduced as a result of intervention was 57%. This was considered to be reasonably high given that individuals were able to chose whether to participate in an investigation about them. Analysis had been undertaken in relation to the reduction in the number of cases concluded that were inconclusive. This had fallen by 5% due to improvements in the knowledge and skills of staff carrying out safeguarding work.

In response to a Health and Wellbeing Board Member question about the reasons for the reduction in the percentage of safeguarding concerns raised by family members and how this compared to other areas, the Interim Assistant Director of Adult Social Care said that information would be circulated to the Board.

Decision

The Health and Wellbeing Board noted the Annual Report, made comments and considered implications for the Health and Wellbeing Board.