Making Safeguarding Personal Report 22-23
Building upon the work of the Healthwatch Kingston Adult Safeguarding Community Reference Group, the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames (RBK) Adult Social Care (ASC) Adult Safeguarding asked Healthwatch Kingston independently to collect feedback from people who have been through the Kingston adult safeguarding process.
Originally the scope of the MSP pilot focused on adults at risk with learning disabilities. RBK then expanded it to include people being supported by the Mental Health Social Care Team, and in July 2021 it was extended to all Adult Social Care Teams.
This Healthwatch Kingston report provides anonymised feedback shared by local people who have been through experience of the Kingston adult safeguarding process.
The Making Safeguarding Personal Project in Kingston focuses on developing personal outcomes that support people to improve or resolve their circumstances. It engages people throughout their safeguarding journey about the outcomes they want and then works with them to ascertain the extent to which these outcomes were realised at the end of the process.
Recommendations for RBK Adult Social Care:
- Healthwatch Kingston recommends social workers formally offer everyone (particularly the elderly, people with disabilities and men of all ages) going through the adult safeguarding process, access to an advocate (professional or personal) and that the potential benefits of having someone speak up on your behalf is explained to all at the beginning of their safeguarding experience.
- Healthwatch Kingston recommends extra attention is paid to involving service users from the beginning of the process. Asking more about their situation and asking what outcomes the service user would like.
- Healthwatch Kingston recommends the Learning Disability Team share their safeguarding practice experiences with other RBK adult social care teams to support department-wide safeguarding practice development.
- Healthwatch Kingston recommends more focus on conversations about future risk (safety plan and potential for recurrent future risk) to ensure service users understand that what happened may happen again or continue to happen without continuing with their plan.
- Healthwatch Kingston recommends continued involvement from social workers to discuss and encourage service users to share feedback through the MSP project, to support future insight gathering.
Recommendations for RBK Adult Social Care and Commissioning:
6. Healthwatch Kingston recommends RBK Adult Social Care and Commissioning ensure care providers inform family members or friends involved in a person’s care about safeguarding incidents.
Recommendations for the Kingston Safeguarding Adults Board:
7. Healthwatch Kingston recommends improved understanding of safeguarding processes across all partners of the Kingston safeguarding system (for example, but not limited to, safeguarding between hospital and care home providers) to ensure all partners provide a seamless and positive safeguarding experience.
