Agenda item

In accordance with the Care Act 2014, the Kent and Medway Safeguarding Adults Board is required to publish an Annual Report each financial year. The 2017-18 Annual Report (Appendix 1) sets out the responsibilities and structure of the Board and then details how the multiagency partnership is delivered against its five priorities for the year. The report also provides safeguarding activity information and summarises the Board's priorities for 2018-2019.

Discussion

The report was introduced to the Committee, the key points of which were as follows:

·         The KMSAB budget of £203,000 included contributions from Medway and Kent Councils, the NHS, the Kent Police and Crime Commissioner and a voluntary contribution from Kent Fire and Rescue.

·         The Safeguarding Adults Executive Group had been established in 2016 to bring together senior representatives from key agencies. This worked collaboratively to deliver strategic priorities and to strengthen delivery, practice, oversight and governance.

·         Agreed aims of KMSAB were to ensure partnership accountability; raise public awareness of engagement; make safeguarding personal; to quality assure work;to measure effectiveness of what we do; share learning from other people’s experience and; ask for feedback about what we do.

·         In July 17, the Board agreed three safeguarding priorities for 2018 – 2021 - prevention, quality and awareness. A Business Group had been added to the KMSAB structure between the Board and its four working groups.

·         A Safeguarding Adults awareness campaign took place in October 2017 with the theme ‘respect not neglect.’ A number of awareness raising sessions were held.

·         Three large learning events were held in March 2018, based upon feedback from the awareness campaign. These attracted a total of 460 multi-agency attendees.

·         A new multi-agency training programme for safeguarding launched in May 2017. 761 staff were trained between June 2017 and April 2018.

·         Four Safeguarding Adult Reviews were completed in 2017-18 with a number of agencies also being involved in two additional out-of-area reviews that were led by other local authorities.

·         Identified challenges included the need to: improve quality of record keeping in relation to ASC; improve care and case coordination and management; strengthen safeguarding management and leadership and; enhance collaborative working.

·         There continued to be an increase in safeguarding enquiries in Kent and Medway. There had been 10,329 concerns raised in Kent and 1,281 in Medway during the year with there having been a 28.4% (283) increase in Medway compared to the previous year. Formal safeguarding enquiries in Medway had increased from 308 in 2016/17 to 491 in 17/18. The increases were attributed to operational improvement and Medway’s promotion of safeguarding awareness and the provision of training.

·         Safeguarding enquiries dealt with within 90 day increased from 37% in 16/17 to 64% in 17/18. Cases where risk was removed increased from 32% to 49% and cases where risk was reduced decreased from 53% to 43%. Levels of self-neglect were increasing.

·         In Medway, the highest proportion of cases were ‘not substantiated’ at 30.6% (124 cases), down 1.5% from 2016-17. 121 cases were substantiated and 52 were partly substantiated.

·         The number of Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) authorisations outstanding reduced from 131 to 66. Six staff had undertaken training to support completion of timely assessments and shortened DoLS annual renewal assessments were being piloted.

A Committee Member thanked the Independent Chair of KMSAB for the quality and depth of the report presented and said that it was pleasing that ‘real name’ pseudonyms had been used in the report as this helped to make the report feel as though it was talking about real people.

A Member asked what the process was when a safeguarding enquiry took place, what the process was if a person needed to be removed from their current home and how assurance was provided that their environment would be free of abuse in the future. It was also asked what the process was if the person did not have the capacity to make a decision themselves. The Independent Chair of KMSAB said that not all adults wanted to be removed from abusive situations and that the right of the individual had to be respected. It was important to understand the ability of an individual to make a decision. There was a need to assess what action would make a person safe and to balance this with what would be acceptable to them. Where a crime was thought to have been committed then a Police referral would be considered. Work would be undertaken with the individual to make the outcome personal to them and to ensure their wishes were clearly understood. A Best Interest meeting would normally be held with relevant professionals in order to consider the case and what the best outcome might be. Work would be undertaken with Police and magistrates if it was concluded that it was in the best interests of a person for them to be moved to a safer environment. However, such removal was not a straightforward process.

The Assistant Director, Adult Social Care said that there had been a particular focus on Making Safeguarding Personal. There had been an increase in the last two years in the number of people who had been asked what outcomes they wanted to achieve through the safeguarding process. The Director of People, Children and Adults’ Services emphasised the importance of establishing a relationship with the alleged victim. Where there were suspicions, increased monitoring could be undertaken with there being a range of tools available.

A Member was concerned that care homes continued to account for a large number of safeguarding concerns and asked whether care homes were required to provide safeguarding training to volunteers.

The independent chair said that the level of training provided was largely the responsibility of individual homes. Many care assistants did not receive formal training and a similar picture was likely in relation to volunteers. Part of the reason for there being high levels of safeguarding issues reported in a care home setting was due to care home staff being more likely to report concerns. The Director of People said that quarterly meetings took place with the CQC to monitor safeguarding referrals and to look at trends in referrals.

Decision

The Committee noted the Annual Report and made comments, which would be referred to the Health and Wellbeing Board when it considered the Annual Report.