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Safeguarding Adults Week – 20 to 24 November 2023

Swindon Safeguarding Partnership is supporting Safeguarding Adults Week!

Theme: “Safeguarding yourself and others”

#SafeguardingAdultsWeek

Safeguarding Adults Week is a time for practitioners and organisations to develop their safeguarding knowledge. We hope the themes for 2023 will raise awareness of new forms of abuse and different ways of recognising and responding to safeguarding concerns in contemporary society.

We have signposted to some local resources and events below for the themed days.

Further information and additional resources on the Ann Craft Trust website

Monday, 20 November -  What’s My Role in Safeguarding Adults?

Context

Safeguarding adults is relevant and important in all sectors. 

Safeguarding is the responsibility of all staff, volunteers and individuals within an organisation or the wider community. 

Resources

Useful SSP resources: 

Tuesday, 21 November - Let’s Start Talking: Taking The Lead on Safeguarding in Your Organisation

Context

Creating a safer organisational culture is vital in promoting the wellbeing of staff, volunteers and the people they support. 

It is important that organisations create environments where everyone is confident their concerns are welcomed, listened to and addressed appropriately.

Organisations should encourage continuous learning and reflection and lead with positive actions and values to ensure people have the confidence to challenge and instigate change.

We want to encourage people to reflect on the culture in their organisation. What is working well in terms of promoting the wellbeing of people within the organisation or, what could be improved? 

Resources

Wednesday, 22 November - Who Cares For The Carers? Secondary and Vicarious Trauma

Context

Anyone who supports others or engages empathetically with people that may have experienced trauma as part of their day-to-day role can experience vicarious trauma as a result.

The BMA explains that vicarious trauma can involve being preoccupied with thoughts about those you support outside of work, feeling angry or sad about the situation of people you support, struggling to maintain professional boundaries or trying to avoid listening to people’s experience of trauma.

On this day, we want to raise awareness of vicarious trauma and provide tools and effective strategies that enable staff and volunteers to promote their own wellbeing when safeguarding others.

Resources

Thursday, 23 November - Adopting a Trauma Informed approach to Safeguarding Adults

Context

Trauma-informed practice encourages practitioners that may be supporting people within their role, to consider how trauma exposure can impact an individual’s ability to function and achieve mental, physical, social, emotional or spiritual wellbeing. Trauma-informed practice encourages us to think about what we need to know to be able to respond to people affected by trauma, understanding the person and what is important to them.

Trauma informed practice was identified as a learning theme in Safeguarding Adult Review (SAR Andrew) highlighting the need when working with adults to support the understanding and use of trauma informed approaches in practice.

We have included some tools and resources to support organisations and practitioners to adopt a trauma-informed approach. 

Resources

Friday, 24 November - Listen, Learn, Lead – Co-Production With Experts by Experience

Context

Co-production is usually where service providers and users work together to reach a collective outcome. The idea behind co-production is that those who are affected or use a service, are best placed to help design it.

Resources

Danielle Smith, Principal Social Worker, Adult Services, Swindon  Borough Council has provided an update on work in Swindon. 

The Think Local, Act Personal definition of co-production is as follows: “A way of working whereby citizens and decision makers, or people who use services, family carers and service providers work together to create a decision or service which works for them all. The approach is value driven and built on the principle that those who use a service are best placed to help design it.”

Swindon Borough Council (SBC) Adult Social Care has an ambition that true and genuine co-production is embedded within all the work we do over the next 5 years. By this, we wish that, where possible, adult social care co-produce activities, recruitment, services, policy and strategic documents with local people and communities, those with experience of local services, and those working with us to deliver services. 

In order to achieve this way of working, we commissioned the Institute of Public Care (IPC) in June, to produce a strategic document that will outline SBC’s values, principles and ambitions for co-production in everyday practice, as well as outlining how SBC plans to achieve this. 

We have held a number of reference groups with people with lived experience and professional stakeholders across Swindon and asked them for their advice on how to embed co-production in adult social care.

Questions included:

  • What do you think the purpose of co-production should be? How should it make you and others feel? 
  • Have you been involved in co-production before? What was it like? What it a good or not so good experience? 
  • What advice do you have for the Council to ensure that how they do co-production in the future is done well? 

The feedback from the reference groups has enabled the IPC to shape a draft ‘Working Together’ plan. We have changed the language from ‘Coproduction’ to ‘Working Together’ because people with a lived experience told us, that ‘coproduction’ is jargon and that their suggestion is easier to understand.  This is why we have decided to use this phrase as part of the title for plan.

In the last week we have concluded our second round of reference groups. We revisited the people who helped us to shape the vison, values and principles of the Working Together Plan to ensure we have heard and accurately reflected what they told us. 

The IPC are now working on the final draft of the Working Together Plan which will be finalised in the coming month. We will then be in a position to launch the plan and focus on embedding this in practice. 

Working Together is our starting point to addressing our local practices, and ensuring that, over the next few years, effectively working together with local people and providers of care and support is our default position and is embedded in everything we do. This is aligned with our Adult Services Strategy that sets a clear expectation to ensure that the people we work with and for, have ‘lives, not services’.