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RCGP Safeguarding toolkit

Part 2C: Identifying adult abuse and neglect

Adult safeguarding is about more than simply keeping someone safe. It is about respecting and protecting an individual’s needs, aspirations and integrity, both mental and physical. It is about making sure the environments they inhabit, and the people and services they encounter with them, reflect the same ideals.

It is important to remember that people are the experts on their own lives and it is our role to work alongside them to identify strengths-based and outcomes-focused solutions – making safeguarding personal. We must work in a way that enhances individual involvement, choice and control as part of improving quality of life, wellbeing and safety.

Making safeguarding personal

Making safeguarding personal involves developing a safeguarding culture that focuses on a person centred and outcome focused approach to safeguarding work. It means adult safeguarding is:

  • person-led
  • outcome-focused
  • engages the person and enhances involvement
  • gives choice and control
  • improves quality of life, wellbeing and safety
  • shifts the focus from process to people.

The six principles of adult safeguarding (embedded in The Care Act 2014) are:

  1. Empowerment. People being supported and encouraged to make their own decisions and informed consent.
  2. Prevention. It is better to take action before harm occurs.
  3. Proportionality. The least intrusive response appropriate to the risk presented.
  4. Protection. Support and representation for those in greatest need.
  5. Partnership. Local solutions through services working with their communities. Communities have a part to play in preventing, detecting, and reporting neglect and abuse.
  6. Accountability. Accountability and transparency in safeguarding practice.

The table below combines the six principles of safeguarding with how the individual should experience them:

Empowerment ‘I am asked what I want as the outcomes from the safeguarding process and these directly inform what happens.’
Prevention ‘I receive clear and simple information about what abuse is, how to recognise the signs and what I can do to seek help.’
Proportionality ‘I am sure that the professionals will work in my interest as I see them and they will only get involved as much as needed.’
Protection ‘I get help and support to report abuse and neglect. I get help so that I am able to take part in the safeguarding process to the extent to which I want.’
Partnership ‘I know that staff treat any personal and sensitive information in confidence, only sharing what is helpful and necessary. I am confident that professionals will work together and with me to get the best result for me.’
Accountability ‘I understand the role of everyone involved in my life and so do they.’
Safeguarding adults and human rights

Safeguarding adults and human rights are intrinsically linked and you cannot have one without the other.

“Human rights are the basic rights and freedoms that belong to every person in the world, from birth until death.
They apply regardless of where you are from, what you believe or how you choose to live your life.
They can never be taken away, although they can sometimes be restricted – for example if a person breaks the law, or in the interests of national security.
These basic rights are based on shared values like dignity, fairness, equality, respect and independence.
These values are defined and protected by law.
In Britain our human rights are protected by the Human Rights Act 1998.”

—The Equality and Human Rights Commission

Like with children, there are human rights that are particularly relevant in safeguarding adults:

  • Article 2: Right to life.
  • Article 3: Freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment.
  • Article 4: Freedom from slavery and forced labour.
  • Article 5: Right to liberty and security.
  • Article 8: Respect for your private and family life, home and correspondence.
  • Article 14: Protection from discrimination in respect of these rights and freedoms.
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