Keeping people safe from harm

If someone is at risk right now

If someone is in immediate danger, or a crime is being committed, call 999. If it is not an emergency but you think a crime has been committed, call the police on 101. Do not wait to speak to us first.

You do not need anyone’s permission to make that call, and you do not need to be certain. It is not your job to decide whether something is abuse — it is your job to say what worried you, and it is for others to look into it.

What a safeguarding concern is

Safeguarding means protecting an adult’s right to live in safety, free from abuse and neglect. A safeguarding concern is a worry that an adult with care and support needs is being harmed, or is at risk of harm, and cannot protect themselves because of those needs.

Abuse and neglect take many forms, including:

• Physical abuse — hitting, rough handling, or the misuse of medication or restraint.
• Neglect — being left without food, warmth, medication, help with the toilet, or medical care.
• Financial abuse — theft, fraud, pressure over money, wills or property, or the misuse of someone’s bank card.
• Psychological or emotional abuse — threats, intimidation, humiliation, isolation, or controlling what someone does.
• Sexual abuse — any sexual act a person did not consent to or could not consent to.
• Discriminatory abuse — harassment or ill treatment because of someone’s race, religion, disability, age, sex or sexuality.
• Organisational abuse — poor care that comes from how a service is run rather than from one person’s actions.
• Domestic abuse, modern slavery, and self-neglect.

It can be deliberate or unintentional, a single incident or a pattern over months, and it can come from anyone — a stranger, a paid carer, a friend or a member of the family.

What we do about it

As a provider registered with the Care Quality Commission, we have a legal duty to protect the people we care for from abuse and improper treatment. In practice that means:

• Everyone who works for us is recruited safely, with the checks a care role requires, including an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service check, before they visit anyone.
• Our carers are trained to recognise abuse and neglect and are expected to report anything that concerns them, including about a colleague.
• Concerns are taken seriously whoever raises them, and are never treated as a complaint to be managed quietly.
• We report safeguarding concerns to the local authority for the area where the person lives, and to the Care Quality Commission where we are required to.
• We cooperate fully with any enquiry the local authority makes, and with the police.
• We keep the person at the centre — what they want to happen matters, and we explain what we are doing and why.
• Nobody who raises a concern in good faith will be penalised for it. That applies to people receiving care, to their families, and to our own staff.

Where a concern involves one of our own carers, they will not continue to visit while it is being looked into. Protecting the person comes before protecting the rota.

How to raise a concern

You can tell us, and you can tell the council. You do not have to choose, you do not have to do them in order, and you do not need our agreement to contact the council directly.

To tell the council, ask for the adult social care team, or the adult safeguarding team, at the council for the area where the person lives. Every council in England has one, and it has a legal duty under the Care Act 2014 to make enquiries when it believes an adult with care and support needs is at risk of abuse or neglect. Their details are on the council’s own website, and their number is usually the council’s main switchboard out of hours.

Tell them what you saw or heard, when, and who was involved, as far as you know it. You will not be asked to prove anything, and a concern that turns out to be a misunderstanding is not a wasted call — it is the system working.

Confidentiality and consent

We normally ask the person before sharing information about them. Safeguarding is the situation where we may not be able to.

If someone is at risk of serious harm, if others may be at risk, or if a crime may have been committed, we may have to share information without consent — and where a person is unable to make the decision for themselves, we act in their best interests under the Mental Capacity Act 2005. We will always tell the person what we have done and why, unless doing so would put them or someone else in danger.

You can raise a concern with us anonymously. It is easier to look into if we can come back to you with questions, but it will still be taken seriously if we cannot.

Other places to go

The Care Quality Commission

Our regulator. It does not investigate individual cases, but it wants to know about poor or unsafe care and uses what it is told to decide how and when to assess a service.

Hourglass

A charity supporting older people affected by harm, abuse or exploitation, with a free confidential helpline.

The police

Abuse is often a crime. 999 in an emergency, 101 otherwise. You can report without the person’s consent if they are at risk.

Tell the Care Quality Commission about your experience of care

Hourglass — support for older people at risk of harm

If your concern is about the quality of our service rather than someone’s safety, use our complaints procedure