Adult safeguarding is now on the same legal footing as child safeguarding as defined in the Care Act 2014.

Adult safeguarding is about helping an adult to live safely, comfortably and free from abuse. Councils, the police and the NHS already work in partnership to safeguard adults who need support and from April 2015, The Care Act (2014) has helped to deliver an even better service. The Care Act (2014) says that every council must:

The council must make enquiries or ask others to make enquiries when they think that an adult with care or support needs is at risk from abuse or neglect.

The Care Act 2014 encourages caregivers to take a person-centred approach when safeguarding vulnerable adults. When you follow the principles, you too place the vulnerable person’s wellbeing and needs at the forefront of safeguarding processes. They help you directly involve the vulnerable person – and any nominated people who can help reach decisions in the vulnerable adult’s best interest – when managing safeguarding concerns and care plans.

Abused or neglected adults are often silent victims during safeguarding concerns, which often means that caregivers make all the decisions while the service user has little to no involvement.

Full guidance can be found at Care Act 2014 (legislation.gov.uk)

This Act clarifies the rights and freedoms of individual. These basic rights are based on shared values like dignity, fairness, equality, respect and independence. These values are defined and protected by law. The Act lets you defend your rights in UK courts and compels public organisations – including the Government, police and local councils – to treat everyone equally, with fairness, dignity and respect.

The Act sets out your human rights in a series of ‘Articles’. Each Article deals with a different right. These are all taken from the ECHR and are commonly known as ‘the Convention Rights’:

This Act has introduced a new criminal offence of ill-treatment and wilful neglect of a person who lacks capacity; more importantly, it has also introduced into law five simple-but-powerful principles that challenge us to create a new person-centred, empowerment-focused framework in which everyone must operate and in which to locate safeguarding work.

Principles of the MCA:

The legislation provides for the repeal of the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) contained in the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA), and their replacement with a new scheme called the Liberty Protection Safeguards (LPS). It is due to come into force in spring 2022. The 2 systems of DoLS and LPS will run alongside for the first year to enable the transfer to take place.
The LPS establishes a process for authorising arrangements enabling care or treatment which give rise to a deprivation of liberty within the meaning of Article 5(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), where the person lacks capacity to consent to the arrangements. It also provides for safeguards to be delivered to people subject to the scheme.
At the present time the government is working on the LPS Code of Practice for this Act.
Full guidance is available at Mental Capacity (Amendment) Act 2019 (legislation.gov.uk)

This Act established the legal basis for the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) to manage the two lists of people barred from working with children and/or vulnerable adults. The Act also placed a statutory duty on all those working with vulnerable groups to register and undergo an advanced vetting process with criminal sanctions for non-compliance. This Act was amended by the Protection
of Freedoms Act 2012. The Protection of Freedoms Act amalgamated the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) and the ISA to form the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS). There are ongoing changes in this legislation that will affect the way disclosures are obtained and checked by employers.

Full guidance can be found at Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 (legislation.gov.uk)

This is an umbrella Act for all anti-discrimination legislation; particularly, it identifies the following as “Protected Characteristics”:

1. Age

2. Disability

3. Gender reassignment

4. Marriage and civil partnership

5. Pregnancy and maternity

6. Race

7. Religion or belief

8. Sex

9. Sexual orientation

Full guidance is available at Equality Act 2010 (legislation.gov.uk)

The legislation has been introduced to give the Secretary of State more power to make regulations imposing any requirements necessary to prevent harm against those receiving medical care. The practical implementation of this is to be affected by the Care Quality Commission. The Act contains measures that together are intended to improve the safety and quality of health services and social care.

The main points of the Act are that it:

1. Seeks to ensure a reduction in the harm suffered by patients and other service users from receiving certain health and social care related services in England.

2. Makes provision for requiring the use of a consistent service user identifier in individual’s health and social care records in England.

3. Is intended to secure the appropriate sharing of information in support of people’s direct care in England to help ensure more integrated care.

4. Seeks to give the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care and certain regulators of health and social care professionals in the UK an overarching objective of public protection.

5. It also requires those regulators committees and panels to have regard to the new objective when determining whether a practitioner is fit to practice

Full guidance can be found at Health and Social Care (Safety and Quality) Act 2015 (legislation.gov.uk)

It is a reflection of where we are today, that although we work in an Adult Social Care setting, we are not immune to the relationships around them.

Section 11 of the Children Act 2004:

“Places duties on a range of organisations, agencies and individuals to ensure their functions, and any services they contract out to others, are discharged having regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.”

The Section 11 duty includes Adult Social Care Services, whilst delivering services to adults, who may, during delivery of those services, come across children, whether they be part of the extended family, visitors, or, who are part of their social support circle.

When staff are providing services to adults they should ask whether the children need help or protection from harm. Children may be at greater risk of harm or be in need of additional help in families where the adults have mental health issues, misuse drugs or alcohol, are in a violent domestic setting or relationship, have complex needs or learning disabilities and when determining what sanctions might be appropriate

Full guidance can be found at Children Act 2004 (legislation.gov.uk)

The Modern Slavery Act 2015 (“the Act”) introduces a number of measures to combat slavery and human trafficking. In addition to creating new criminal offences, powers of enforcement and measures to protect victims, it introduces requirements intended to eliminate slavery and trafficking in global supply chains.

Full guidance can be found at Modern Slavery Act 2015 (legislation.gov.uk)

Under the act, a person is guilty of an FGM offence if they excise, infibulate or otherwise mutilate the whole or any part of a girl’s or woman’s labia majora, labia minora or clitoris. They are guilty of the same if they take the girl abroad from the UK for the procedure to be carried out.

Full guidance is available at Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 (legislation.gov.uk)

It is an offence under the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 for an individual who has the care of another individual by virtue of being a care worker to ill-treat or wilfully to neglect that individual.

Under S44 of the Mental Capacity Act, ill-treatment and wilful neglect is a criminal offence for anyone, including those with powers of attorney and court appointed deputies, who has care of a person who lacks capacity

Ill treatment and wilful neglect are different. Ill treatment must be deliberate, is an offence irrespective of whether it causes harm, and involves an appreciation by the perpetrator that they were inexcusably ill-treating the person. Ill treatment includes acts such as hitting, administering sedatives to keep people quiet, pulling hair, rough treatment, verbal abuse or humiliation.

Wilful neglect is a failure to act rather than a deliberate act to commit harm. Managers with responsibility for ensuring good care can be held accountable but currently there is no offence of corporate neglect.

Full guidance can be found at Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 (legislation.gov.uk)

An important part of providing care is ensuring a working environment that encourages people to challenge practices in their own workplace. The law offers some protection from victimisation to people who blow the whistle under the Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA) 1998. The parameters of ‘protected disclosure’ are set out in the Employment Rights Act (ERA) 1996. The person making the disclosure should not commit an offence in doing so (e.g. breach the Official Secrets Act 1989) and must reasonably believe one or more of the following:

Full guidance is available at Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (legislation.gov.uk)