Adult Protection Committees biennial reports 2012-14: summary report

Future Plans

36. The Biennial Reports covering the period 2012-14 indicated this period was a time of consolidation of practice. Priorities for the future tended to relate to the national priority projects, examples included:

Financial Harm

• Further initiatives to prevent financial harm will be taken forward in conjunction with the Community Safety Partnership.

Adult Protection in Care Homes

• Reviewing and amending adult protection practice in care homes; and
• The Quality and Development Partnership group will progress a whole systems approach to reducing harm in care settings with local providers.

Service User and Carer Involvement

• continuing to explore the appropriate means of engaging with service users and carers to hear and respond to their views;
• developing a network for Service Users to input into planning, etc., in a more user friendly way;
• increasing the membership of the Service User and Carer Group and for it to develop an awareness raising and training role;
• public awareness raising and engagement;
• training for staff and service users; and
• protection planning processes will be reviewed by Social Work in conjunction with the Consultation Group to make them outcome-focussed and more accessible to service users and carers.

37. Other priorities included:

Training

• practitioners having access to a progressive learning and development programme relevant to their agency and professional role;
• Develop and pilot bespoke training for A&E staff;
• Extend awareness training invitation, in relation to Adults at risk of Financial Harm, to Benefits Agency and CAB; and
• Implement training targeted at Care Home and Care at Home managers and staff.

Links with other policy initiatives

• taking an active role in the development of health and social care integration to ensure that adult support and protection services are integrated into the developing structures and processes;
• A joint methodology will be established to support partnership efforts to respond to harm and protection issues across the lifespan in the context of local adult health and social work integration;
• a joint task group will be established to develop effective and practical local approaches to responding to self-harm; and
• Plan joint awareness approach with Self Directed Support lead.

Collaboration between agencies

• promoting better links and developing more integrated working between adult protection, child protection and public protection;
• exploring the potential for direct signposting of adults from police reports to relevant third sector organisations (where they don't meet the criteria of adults at risk of harm);
• tackling remaining concerns about low level of referrals from health professionals
• improving GP engagement; and
• core agencies will implement the multi-agency audit action plan and develop meaningful single and multi-agency Adult Support and Protection performance indicators. A wider range of agencies will participate in future multi-agency case-file audits.

Mental Health and Protection of Rights Division