Agenda item

14.1     The Committee considered a report by the Director of Adult Social Care and Health containing the Safeguarding Adults Board Annual Report 2014/15 and Safeguarding Strategic Plan 2015-18.

14.2     In response to questions raised by Members, officers provided the following additional information:

• The East Sussex Safeguarding Adults Board (SAB) has now appointed Graham Bartlett as its Independent Chair. Due to the fact that Mr Bartlett is the Chair of the Brighton & Hove SAB and Brighton & Hove Local Safeguarding Children’s Board (LSCB), and there are already pan-Sussex safeguarding policies and procedures in place, this appointment is expected to deliver economies of scale.
• The SAB has recorded a reduction in safeguarding referrals from GPs for 2014/15 and is working with the CCGs to understand why this is the case. SAB believes that working with the CCGs to raise awareness of safeguarding issues amongst GPs will have a greater impact than contacting GPs directly. This is because CCGs already have oversight of and influence on GPs (as their membership is derived from GPs) and they are obliged to ensure that there are suitable safeguarding arrangements in place amongst GPs. SAB is aiming to create an environment within CCGs where GPs who sit on the CCG boards understand that safeguarding is a priority, cascade this message down to GP surgery level, and put a monitoring regime in place.
• The reason for the change in policy for reporting pressure ulcers – which explains the reduction in safeguarding alerts in 2014/15 – is that they are no longer automatically flagged as a safeguarding issue unless there is a suspicion of neglect.  Prior to 2014/15, all safeguarding referrals due to pressure ulcers were being flagged as examples of neglect as part of a response to historic underreporting. However, the reporting policy changed in 2014/15 to a more proportional response that focusses on raising awareness of pressure ulcers amongst staff in residential and community settings. Under the new system, if an initial safeguarding alert is raised, then the Quality Team will intervene to provide advice and guidance. However, if there are repeated and systemic safeguarding alerts then it is likely that it could be investigated as a case of neglect.
• SAB collects incident reports from multiple sources to ensure that they are as accurate as possible. These include incident reports produced by the CCGs and the reporting procedures that the Care Quality Commission (CQC) follows when it inspects care homes. There is no absolute guarantee that incident reports will tell the whole picture, so the SAB remains proactive in developing qualitative and quantitative information as well as looking out for anecdotal safeguarding issues.
• In the 7% of cases where there was action under safeguarding arrangements and risk was not reduced or removed – usually because the victim wanted to maintain a relationship with the family member who was the source of the risk – SAB continues to work with the victim.
• The SAB identifies areas where there may be issues in the reporting of safeguarding issues and works with stakeholders to improve the situation. This process is ongoing and other methods will be employed if the initial piece of work does not have the desired effect. For example, SAB carried out a piece of work with the parishes to understand whether abuse was being underreported in rural areas. The outcome of the work was a slight increase in the number of reported cases of abuse.
• SAB undertakes an annual safeguarding audit on all organisations involved in safeguarding, which involves SAB member organisations performing a self-audit. SAB would expect organisations to have a whistleblowing policy in place that would set out how a whistleblower would be protected if they raise safeguarding issues.
• SAB provides safeguarding training to care providers using a range of methods such as formal offsite training as well as attending home care provider premises. This ensures that there is a much higher uptake of the training amongst staff.

14.3     The Committee RESOLVED to:

1)    Thank the East Sussex SAB for its well written, informative and concise Annual Report and Strategic Plan; and

2)    Request to receive a report on the next Annual Report and Strategic Plan at its September 2016 meeting.