Neglect or abuse can be minimised by high quality care services, says a study published today by the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI). The study found that councils which perform well on safeguarding tend to have not only better arrangements for assisting people who have experienced abuse, but better systems for helping to prevent abuse happening in the first place.

Safeguarding adults: A study of the effectiveness of arrangements to safeguard adults from abuse reports on arrangements that are in place in England to help prevent the abuse of adults and to support those who experience abuse. The study also reports that disabled and older people who experience abuse get a varied quality of support.

CSCI Chair Dame Denise Platt said:

“Everybody receiving care services has the right to be safeguarded, and any form of abuse is unacceptable. They should also have access to a range of options to support them and help keep them safe.

“Our report finds that not all social care organisations have made enough progress in developing effective safeguarding arrangements. But there are some excellent examples of good practice, and these need to be spread more widely.” Key finding from the study include:

• Disabled and older people who experience abuse get a varied quality of support, due to uneven progress by councils and care services in developing effective safeguarding arrangements.
• More needs to be done to ensure people who direct their own support are able to benefit from appropriate and individually tailored safeguards. Everyone using services should be able to access a range of options for support to keep safe from abuse that can be tailored to their individual need.
• It is important to prevent abuse happening in the first place but work on prevention of abuse is also variable within and across council areas and within care services. For example, councils should “design safeguarding into services” through service contracts.

Councils are beginning to provide options to help prevent abuse for people who direct their own support (under developments such as Direct Payments or Individual Budgets) but the evidence indicates that no council yet has a systematic approach in place for this.

The report identifies that councils rated as good by CSCI are also those that have more care services in their area with effective safeguarding arrangements in place, such as home care agencies and care homes. If a council is performing well at helping to keep people safe, a greater number of regulated services in their area are performing well too. The study also found that care services that receive a good or excellent quality rating from CSCI are more likely to have effective safeguarding arrangements in place.

Paul Snell, CSCI’s Chief Inspector, said:

"Our study provides evidence from the wide range of services we regulate and inspect, across councils, care homes and home care agencies. Whereas the overall picture across this range is varied, we have found that the best councils are demonstrating active leadership on safeguarding and building strong partnerships locally, for example with police and health services. The study shows that in the best councils and services there is a commitment to good safeguarding practice that starts at the top."

He continued:

"Although our study confirms the rising profile of work to safeguard adults from abuse across the country, there is significant variation in the degree of priority shown to safeguarding adults, and more work is required to bring all services up to the standard of the best."