Safeguarding adults
Safeguarding means protecting the health, wellbeing, and human rights of an adult at risk, enabling them to live safely, free from abuse and neglect.
What is an ‘Adult at Risk’?
An ‘Adult at Risk’ is anyone over the age of 18 who:
- Has care and support needs.
- Is experiencing, or at risk of, abuse or neglect.
- As a result of their care and support needs is unable to protect themselves from either the risk of, or the experience of abuse or neglect.
Definitions Of Abuse - Adults
The Care Act 2014 Statutory Guidance provides the following list of possible types of abuse:
Physical abuse
This includes assault, hitting, slapping, pushing, misuse of medication, restraint or inappropriate physical sanctions.
Domestic violence
This includes psychological, physical, sexual, financial, emotional abuse; and so called ‘honour’ based violence.
Sexual abuse
This includes rape, indecent exposure, sexual harassment, inappropriate looking or touching, sexual teasing or innuendo, sexual photography, subjection to pornography or witnessing sexual acts, indecent exposure and sexual assault or sexual acts to which the adult has not consented or was pressured into consenting.
Psychological abuse
This includes emotional abuse, threats of harm or abandonment, deprivation of contact, humiliation, blaming, controlling, intimidation, coercion, harassment, verbal abuse, cyber bullying, isolation or unreasonable and unjustified withdrawal of services or supportive networks.
Financial / material abuse
This includes theft, fraud, internet scamming, coercion in relation to an adult’s financial affairs or arrangements, including in connection with wills, property, inheritance or financial transactions, or the misuse or misappropriation of property, possessions or benefits.
Modern slavery
This encompasses slavery, human trafficking, forced labour and domestic servitude. In these cases, traffickers and slave masters use whatever means they have at their disposal to coerce, deceive and force individuals into a life of abuse, servitude and inhumane treatment.
Discriminatory abuse
This includes harassment, slurs or similar treatment because of race, gender and gender identity, age, disability, sexual orientation or religion.
Organisational or Institutional abuse
This includes neglect and poor care practice within an institution or specific care setting such as a hospital or care home, for example, or in relation to care provided in one’s own home. This may range from one off incidents to on-going ill-treatment. It can be through neglect or poor professional practice as a result of the structure, policies, processes and practices within an organisation.
Neglect or acts of omission
This includes ignoring medical, emotional or physical care needs, failure to provide access to appropriate health, care and support or educational services and the withholding of the necessities of life, such as medication, adequate nutrition and heating.
Self-neglect
This covers a wide range of behaviour, neglecting to care for one’s personal hygiene, health or surroundings and includes behaviour such as hoarding.
Supporting adult survivors of non-recent abuse
Non-recent abuse, sometimes called historical abuse, is when an adult was abused as a child or young person under the age of 18. Abuse can mean many things to different people and could be emotional, physical or sexual or a combination of them all. Many adults have never spoken about this abuse and this has had a significant impact on both their childhood and adult lives.
The Trust is committed to ensuring that our staff are able and willing to talk with anyone who uses our services about past abuse, if they choose to do so.
We will always try to make sure that if you choose to disclose past abuse, we are available to you, we are supportive, and that we do everything we can to make sure that you get whatever help you need in understanding it and living with it. This may include supporting you to report the abuse, particularly if there may be others at risk.
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