Multi-Agency working and safeguarding adults in care.

Name: Abby Dunn

Tutor: Vinnie Smith

Group: 2D

Multi-Agency Working

Unit Eleven Safeguarding Adults Distinction two

There have been various cases recently in the news to where abuse has been either suspected of confirmed, for example the Panorama undercover programme at Winterbourne view whereby a range of physical, emotional, psychological abuse were identified. Abuse is defined as ‘A violation of an individual’s human and civil rights by any other person or persons’. Vulnerable people are more open to abuse due to the individuals either not being able to stand up for themselves and are usually unwell, frail or/and confused.

Different types of services try to combat this abuse through taking a multi-agency approach whereby the organisations all work together to discover ways of preventing the abuse from taking place in the beginning or resurrect the situation when abuse has been confirmed by providing a range of support through support planning and single assessment. Rather than the organisations working separately and providing separate services without any communication, multi-agency working encourages the services to work together through sharing information and a co-ordination of approach whereby the individual’s needs are central to the process and that a person centred care approach is used. With multi-agency working there will be an array of professionals from different agencies where they will combine each of their individual skills and expertise to meet all of the individual’s holistic needs. For Multi-agency working to be successful, good communication from all organisations and a good understanding of what each other do is crucial. Not only this but it also requires a co-ordinating professional, to ensure that the organisations are working to satisfactory levels and that the needs of the individual are being met.

Another benefit is that through multi-agency working, it is encouraged for the individual to have involvement in their health care services and allows them to feel more confident in talking about their worries, fears and potential abuse. Not only this but having equality through the relationships of the working encourage the individual to develop a higher self-esteem, self-confidence and the strength to stop accepting the abusive situations that may occur are the norm. It also ensures that there is an agreed approach to all of the organisations which are involved including the families and informal carers as well so that ...

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Multi-agency working is also a way of enabling better information sharing and communication in terms of the staff, team meetings, communication via emails and written records such as in a care home whereby there would be a daily log which enables each staff coming on shift to be able aware of events that had taken place since they were last on duty. With the multi-agency approach they believe that the sharing of information and concern will conclude to early preventive action on abuse to take place and that patterns of behaviour can be identified of the service users when different members of staff come on to duty which could suggest that abuse is taken place by that worker.

Forums are another way in which multi agency works (monthly meetings of residents in care services) where by the individuals are encouraged to share ideas and speak out giving the individuals more confidence to speak out and have a greater ownership and independence in terms of decisions that affect their lives such as being involved in interviewing new care staff. Not only this but it is also a chance for the service users to understand what procedures and guidelines that the care service has and their own rights emphasised to increase their expectations of the individual care that they receive.

When the service users are clear on the guidelines they are more understanding on the what the behaviour of the staff should be, so not only are these guidelines are for the use of the staff but they are also for the service user to know what is acceptable behaviour from the staff and what is not. This is why the complaints procedure should be understood by all service users of the health facility and should be able to gain access to by all even if support is needed from an advocate from outside the organisation when making a complaint.

So that there is a guarantee that all the staff members understand new procedures and policies, training needs to be implemented. Each new staff that works at the service also will require a formal induction whereby all of these policies and procedures are explained thoroughly, which will then underline their expected behaviour and practice in the service.

Without training taking place, abuse is more likely to happen because of the poor practice and the workers lack of understanding of the policies and procedures. To prevent this from taking place and to ensure that the services are working with the best interest of the service user and following the rules and regulations that apply to each of them an independent regulator of health and social care services was established but shortly taken over by The Care Quality Commission previously help by the Commission for Social Care Inspection, the Healthcare Commission and the Mental Health Commission in April 2009 (stretch et al, 2010).

Procedures laid down by the organisation in conjunction to the multi-agency framework should be followed in terms of cases of alleged or suspected abuse and include six stages including alerting the worker who has the responsibility of dealing with these situations to then for them to refer the allegation to the police or social services who will feedback after investigation and an Adult Protection Case Conference will share results of the investigation with the vulnerable persons family who is the subject of abuse. An assessment is then carried out and a review of a Protection Plan to make sure that the individual’s needs are met in the future which will then be monitored and recorded.

If another member of staff identifies the abuse they have the chance to whistleblow which since the Public Interest Disclosure Act (1998) the staff have the right not to suffer detrimentally or be fired as a result of disclosing the information. In the past it has been known that staff have been aware of abuse taking place however have not reported it due to not wanting to be known as a ‘grass’ to the service and their employees.

To ensure that new employees of health and social care services are suitable for the job role of caring for vulnerable adults they will require a CRB check which since October 2009 they are required to obtain an Enhanced check rather than the normal standard check. This allows the employer to be aware of the convictions to which these individuals applying for the job may have and therefore will be able to pick which potential employer is actually right for the job role in terms of offering greater protection to the service users.

This however may not always go to plan due to the loop holes which can still be identified in cases such as in the Winterbourne View residential care home whereby Panorama went undercover after a whistleblower who previously worked at the care service alerted higher authorities with the management at the care home and to the Quality Care Commission however his claims didn’t get followed up however after the programme was shown the Safeguarding Adults Board were made aware and appropriate action was taken in line with established and procedures which should have been followed by the staff members previously to prevent the abuse. The abuse in which was taken place could have been prevented through thorough training of the staff and ensuring they were up to date with these policies and procedures. Not only this however but the recruitment of the staff should also have been more carefully picked with staff members with job history of being a tattooist with no previous healthcare qualifications.

In conclusion if the policies, procedures and guidelines were followed correctly and appropriate training was also implemented then the abuse that took place at Winterbourne View would have never happened. If the communication between the different services was also improved through a multi-agency working approach then the abuse could have been stopped a period of time before the Panorama programme.

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