34 Enquiry by local authority
This clause places a duty on local authorities to make enquiries, or to ask others to make enquiries, where they reasonably suspect that an adult in its area with care and support needs is at risk of abuse or neglect. The purpose of the enquiry is to establish what, if any, action is required in relation to the case. This clause supplements the existing obligations on other organisations to look after the people in their care effectively, or, in the case of the police, to prevent and respond to criminal activity. It applies to adults currently in its geographical area, whether or not the person is ordinarily resident there, and regardless of whether the authority is meeting their care and support needs.
(1) Where a local authority has reasonable cause to suspect that an adult in its area (whether or not ordinarily resident there)—
(a) has needs for care and support (whether or not the authority is meeting any of those needs),
(b) is experiencing, or is at risk of, abuse or neglect, and
(c) as a result of those needs is unable to protect himself or herself against the abuse or neglect or the risk of it, it must make (or cause to be made) whatever enquiries it thinks necessary to enable it to decide whether any action should be taken in the adult’s case (whether under this Part or otherwise) and, if so, what and by whom.
(2) “Abuse” includes—
(a) having money or other property stolen,
(b) being defrauded,
(c) being put under pressure in relation to money or other property, and
(d) having money or other property misused.
I work as Head of Safeguarding Adults for the Leeds Safeguardng Adults Board. I totally disagree with the logic of using “Enquiry” rather than “Investigation”. This is a retrograde step, when we are trying to improve the competence of Safeguarding Investigators and investigation coordinators to ensure that they deliver evidence-based concl;usions about allegations of abuse or neglect.
Safeguarding can only be just and fair to both the adult at risk or harm and the person or organisation alleged to have caused harm if there is a thorough and well planned and conducted investigation. It is true that Police undertake criminal investigations. But there are plenty of other investigations undertaken (cf complaints investigations, disciplinary investigations, root cause analysis investigations, clinical investigations). The logic described in the Government response to the Law Commission’s review of adult social care. It sounds like the logic that used to be used by social workers in the old adult protection days (e.g. we’re not allowed to investigate, we don’t have a madate, we can only assess needs). Well the world has moved on dramatically since those days. The Bournemouth Safeguarding competency framework quite clearly uses the term investigation, and Safeguarding Boards are generally able to cope with the difference between a safeguarding investigation and a criminal one, so I think the Government should be able to as well.
I do not agree that investigation of the expensive kind you suggest is other than rarely necessary.
Social services do not use evidence based reasoning. Social workers apply social theory / psychololgy on ‘gut feelings’ of a situation, using ‘stock phrases’ now increasingly recognised known by the public, where they have no real evidence of harm / neglect/ abuse. Gut feelings are not a reason to initiate actions.
The police are much better skilled at this work as they have to deal with difficult / dangerous situations everyday, unlike social workers, and they do not rely on prevailing theory to make judgements of what they see or hear.
The need for adult services to justify their work and costs with inability to assess risk meaningfully in relation to adult safeguarding underpins much of what you suggest here- the chequered fashion in which safeguarding adults occurs.
Wasting resources making poor decisions is what is happening- when some areas have great need e.g. people hidden from the public gaze in institutions like Winterborne, where they have families / friends/ neighbours not in a position to see what is happening. This is where ongoing adult safeguarding should be focused.
If social services keep requesting any ‘suspicion’ gets reported they will get a lot of ‘false’ reporting, including malicious, and not ensure people are watchful and report actually what has been evidenced by them or disclosed to them. This is where there is a need to focus work and investigations. But there is a need to be aware of malicious false retaliatory reporting and be alert to this possibility too to avoid costly investigations.
The problem is most staff involved in safeguarding are not experiecned or skilled enough for the work to really explore adequately, without judgement and determine what factually is suggestive of serious harm / neglect / abuse. It is not uncommon for social workers to decide they are going to prove abuse (i.e. make up a story) when they have no evidence. So use of stock phrases comes into play.
Good investigations need to be based on trying to evidence the truth about a situation, whoever undertakes them. They do not need to be expensive.
Definition of truth: the true or actual state of a matter:
Definition of evidence:an outward sign : indication b: something that furnishes proof : testimony; specifically
What on earth does ‘evidence of truth’ mean? Is this some new ‘social work speak?’
Safeguarding is already becoming an expensive and unsustainable industry; the NHS statistics data show that nearly 2/3 of safeguarding alerts are unsubstantiated/ undetermined. Even basic safeguarding enquiries / investigations involve much social work time and will prove expensively wasteful where declining local authority resources are involved.
Social workers in trying to gain recognition of adult social services social work now use adult safeguarding activity to seek public and professional recognition, which at present is confined to child protection social work. This must not allowed to be the reason to go ahead with much of what is proposed in this Bill.
There is a need for a much wider public debate, as most people do not realise how this Bill could at some stage affect them as they age, become incapacitated or end up being full time carers. Most people would agree that certain groups need protection from harm, but many might take issue as to how this is being dealt with at present. Many do not understand how the system works in actuality- not the theory or the policy or procedural documents.
The important thing is that in checking out whether alleged abuse has happened, we have to try and understand exactly what has been alleged and what evidence there is to suggest that an allegation is true or false. Conclusions should not be drawn without some evidence to substantiate the conclusion.
In cases written up for court of protection proceedings social workers who have no evidence state their intention to prove an abuse; where the person is someone with whom the local authority have differences. This is how dangerously bad safeguarding work is on the ground and is an indication of what ACTUALLY occurs- with often fabrications/ lies and use of ‘stock phrases’ to imply harm/ abuse as a potential act, where no evidence exists and nothing can be found to support allegations. USED TO JUSTIFY OUTCOMES THAT SOCIAL WORKERS SEEK.
No doubt the residents of Winterborne and many similar situations experiencing abuses daily, unseen by others and un-investigated would be exerting a right in asking who has been there to safeguard them?
The training I provide is aimed at improving social workers practice in conducting investigations and making their evidence based decisions and judgements. The views you expound (stock phrases and gut feelings) are not appropriate when dealing with such sensitive and difficult situations.
I agree that the police have a lot of expertise in ivnestigations but they have to work to a “beyond resonable doubt” burden of proof. In safeguarding cases the burden of proof is “balance of probability” – a lower threshold – so that we are able to act in those cases where the police would not be able to respond.
The tragic situation at Winterbourne View would not have been any different if the police had been involved – many officers do not have the relevant professional knowledge of people with learning disabilities, mental illness, or dementias to be able to act in many situations, especially where the person may not be able to make a complaint in their own right.
If there is an issue about who should investigate or make enquiries, you may need to address these comments to the govenrment who decided back in 2000 to give the responsibility to social services in the first place.
There is a serious need to raise the threshold in safeguarding work to the level the police work to. The low threshold is more likely to lead to poor work / mistakes and allow vindictive and inadequate social workers, (Kim Bromley Derry previous chair of Children’s Services was reported in the press as stating social workers were not infrequently vindictive), to behave badly with families who challenge social services.
The raising of thresholds in safeguarding must be equal to that a jury would work to, there is no justifiable reason for it to be lower.
From my experience the Police have no interest or ability to review a vulnerable adults position to initiate a protective process or methodology which stops the offender and puts the vulnerable adult in a safe place. I have seen evidence of people being defrauded and concerns being raised with vulnerable adults teams (including a Police officer) where no proper investigation took place. The vulnerable adults bank accounts were being accessed by someone without authority and substantial amounts of money not being accounted for. When civil action was taken the judgement was that unless the offender held an LPA, EPA or Court of Protection Court order the offence was seen as someone just helping a vulnerable person out and that the person was under no requirement to account for their use of the vulnerable adults funds. I wonder what the purpose of the EPA,LPA or Court of Protection is as it would appear that if you don’t hold any of these authorities you can do pretty much what you like with no fear of the Police, Vulnerable adults team or Court doing anything about it.
I agree fully with the comments expresses and there are numerous times when the level of ‘guilt’ identified would not warrant criminal proceedings and if an investigation waits until the decision is made by the CPS valuable evidence will be lost. The comment above sees Root Cause Analysis as a separate type of investigation however having used the tool for many years, it should be used as the basis for all investigations, be they complaints, known erroneous acts or illegal actions. By using RCA it takes away the subjective view of an incident, prevents investigators confirming false hypotheses, and by using cognitive interviewing techniques will help find the truth when interviewing thus identifying systems failures as opposed to malicious or reckless acts.
Firstly, there is not a case that anything has happened in many safeguarding alerts, just people raising subjective concerns based on something they may or may not know about which worries them – not the person subject to the alert.
I was not suggesting RCA be used as it is not a single sharply defined methodolgy and cognitive interviewing techniques are designed to elicit guilt. In the hands of social services personnel that just feeds into the manner of interviewing and ‘gut beliefs’ held by the interviewer.
If e.g. a demented person says money has gone missing (A very very common outburst known in dementia patients), without any actual evidence that anything has happened, the cognitive interview may be used to twist and interpret, as opposed to determine if anything has actually happened. That is the reality of social workers safeguarding work which is far from the ideal of it (Rochdale highlights attitudes well).
I do, however, fully agree with the thrust of the clause. Adult Social Care should have this duty, as described.
“Abuse” under this heading should cover the following, and not be restricted to financial;
i) financial / materiel
ii) acts of omission
iii) sexual
iv) psychological
v) physical
Acts of omission must include that by many local authority adult services departments found seriously wanting in their own work. Needs assessments and service provision often do not adequately meet the needs of the most vulnerable people and care agencies commissioned are often actually causing harm through such inadequate services.
I agree. It should be the seven types of abuse as described in various nationally accepted documents and systems including the AVA return.
Physical
Sexual
Emotional / Psychological
Financial and Material
Neglect and Acts of Omission
Discriminatory
Institutional
But I don’t think the other types are excluded by clause 34. I think they are just not explicitly listed. It does appear therefore to give more focus to financial abuse than the others. But this might be because they think people are less likely to recognise these examples as abuse.
The issue of ‘abuses’ by local authority must be tackled. Too much suspicion is focused on families caring in difficult circumstances where local authorities are unwilling to help adequately to support them. This ignores the bigger picture of abuses of those in need. Maybe if the CQC was made more critical and robust they could take on an investigative / audit role.
I have known a vulnerable person aged 85 years for 30 years. She and her late husband were know to relevant adult services teams. She repeatedly ended up in psychiatric hospital, each time preferring to return to her home than go into residential care.
I discovered that the local authority provided a daily care worker to assist with domestic tasks. Having seen her ‘out and about’ since she is highly vulnerable to harm, but is able to get out locally to get the paper and is not totally isolated compared to others like her, She would not cope without help. I noted the care worker had dropped off tiles from her living room during cleaning, these remain on the hearth. This lady showed me the bills for the ‘care service’ from the council. These amount to a charge of £17.50 per hour and she pays more than £500/ month. She does not seem to understand financial assessments and I am unclear from her whether she actually filled in any forms. She does not feel able to ‘challenge’ anything. No one appears to have told her or helped her with direct payments which would allow her to find a care agency direct, for her needs, at a lower cost. She confirmed she barely covers her financial needs from income, she states her savings have been decreasing.
This is a prime example of abuses perpetrated by social services through not helping vulnerable people get the best deals for themselves when they do not understand the system or can negotiate it themselves. She need not pay £17.50 per hour- this is financial abuse by the local authority who pocket the excess from the approx £11-12 per hour they are now paying for care services.
The major difficulty I have here is the phrase “cause to be made”. What is the obligation of other agencies (statutory, voluntary, private or charitable) to comply with a request for an enquiry? For example, how would social services hold an NHS trust/independent service provider to account if they did not cooperate in making an enquiry?
It feels as if there is a duty without any support.
My query related to 34 (2) which appears to already have been raised by Gary Spencer-Humphrey and Hilary Paxton.
It states that:
“Abuse” includes—
(a) having money or other property stolen,
(b) being defrauded,
(c) being put under pressure in relation to money or other property, and
(d) having money or other property misused.”
I am assuming that the suggestion being made here is that ‘Abuse’ includes the above mentioned alongside other types of abuse that has not been referred to?
I strongly feel that this section needs to be expanded to include all types of abuse to make it explicitly clear and aviod any confusion / misunderstanding.
The definition of abuse is too focused on finance and must be expanded to include the other categories – physical.psychological ……..
My view is that the term ‘enquiry’ does best describes the the role of the Local Authority and partner agencies in regard to safeguarding adults alerts / referral and is so preferable to ‘investigation’.
The duty to make such ‘enquiries ‘ does need to be backed up or supported by legal powers especially where the situation is complex and there are barriers to accessing the person at risk.Without such powers to excercise this duty to make enquires the LA will be unable to implement this proposed legislation.
The practises of conducting enquiries/investigation in adult safeguarding occur now very inconsistently (there are carers blogs which highlight this)and that will not change with strengthening legislation, which will only have the effect of giving social workers policing powers, without actually significantly robust action to improve the well being outcomes for the person who is the subject of an enquiry.
What it appears is that social services personnel are not at all confident to the task of safeguarding work because of the skills needed are those for which the police are necessarily all well trained. Confidence, not domination or arrogance about power will get relevant others co-operating e.g. GP’s, community nurses and others to whom a person who may be in need is already known, to be able to get a rounded picture from which to assess whether serious risk (not just some undefined notion of risk) is serious issue needing access at all.
if no one else deems the person is at serious risk, why would powers be needed for access? A social worker is not the only person who can assess risks- it is a common sense role for many people, including family if a person has family.
Complex situations are ones which also have the greatest liklihood of being ‘over interpreted’ negatively, as a defensive measure to avoid any risk, this is not conducive to good decisions or person centred thinking.
I completely agree with the above comments that the legislation needs to cover more than financial abuse. To not include this could lead to other types of abuse being overlooked.
I have read other consultees’ input with interest, and have sympathies with both extremes, if they could be characterised as such. that is, councils are not there to find guilt, as if they were a court, and are not resourced to respond to abuse, other than to provide services that are within their remit (ie to meet social care needs). Many forms of abuse / outcomes of abuse will not be able to be solved or helped at all by social care services, but the other agencies, who could do something about those issues, cannot be MADE to act, by councils. Eg, the police’s attitude to abuse varies from force to force; the Official Solicitor has a budget and apparently cannot afford to do more than help in health and welfare matters; the Public Guardian does not investigate abuse, and neither does CQC, which only regulates, apparently (although it will actually read the complaint letters it gets, after Winterbourne View). So of course councils cannot be expected to do proper investigations, but they must still manage risk, and therefore assess it, going on more than gut feelings. That is because risk of physical or mental harm at the hands of others is always going to be be eligible for intervention and funding, if there is anything that they can do or buy which will make any feasible difference. On the other hand, the idea of councils’ so-called enquiries or investigations being run by people who have no forensic training, no resources to pay for independent investigators, and social work teams who will have talked to people, endlessly, about who is doing what to whom, or who said whatever, about so and so, doing such and such, to so and so, without anyone ever seemingly writing anything down about such conversations, leads to safeguarding officers taking no account of the need to provide procedural fairness to all concerned, (including providers and alleged perpetrators); no account of the idea that one is innocent until proven guilty; no account of the legal problem that alleged perpetrators are often also best interests consultees, under the Mental Capacity Act, and still have to be consulted unless one is prepared to tell them why not, and no account of the possibility that their own colleagues’ approach to forcing the price of the service, forever down, might just have had something to do with the harm that has resulted – hence litigation like the recent West Sussex case, resulting in trenchant criticism of the approach to safeguarding there.
I think that this section is the best that can be done to indicate that a safeguarding trigger signifies a very special sort of assessment of need, which together with proper compliance with the duties to co-operate, in the early part of the Bill, might lead to better conclusions and risk management plans, but not without proper resources, and much better awarenes of the options at the team’s disposal. I would endorse the need to make it clear that the definition of abuse, focusing on financial matters, is only explicitly including them, and not for a minute limiting the definition to matters financial.
Introduction.
The East Riding of Yorkshire Safeguarding Adults Board held a multi agency/multi disciplinary consultation event which also included service user representatives and carers on 26th September 12. The event focussed on those aspects of the Care & Support Bill relating to safeguarding ‘Adults at Risk’ and also took the opportunity to seek views on the new ‘Safeguarding Power’. The below responses reflect the general debate and the main points from the small group work that took place.
Section 34-Duty to Enquire.
It was felt that this section lacked detail and whilst it was recognised that further guidance to support the legislation was likely further detail was required in some areas of this section. There was a strong feeling that the removal of the types of abuse contained within the ‘No Secrets’ guidance yet still defining financial abuse was a retrograde step. The use of the word ‘enquire’ as opposed to investigation also prompted some debate is it the intention that the words are used interchangeably or does it mean something different. A strong feeling was expressed that the legislation should not be enacted without updated guidance to replace ‘No Secrets’.
Summary of Group Feedback
• The wording is vague, what is “reasonable cause”? This wording is fairly powerful and could provide a reason for undertaking an investigation.
• The vague wording could be of benefit re local interpretation.
• Could there be a clear definition of the word “enquire” to make clear exactly what constitutes an enquiry eg is it the same or different to an investigation?
• What happens after an enquiry – action, decision-making etc? Enquire is only the start
• If the definition of an enquiry was not made clearer there could be a risk of interventions occurring when they are not necessarily required.
• The definition of abuse is weak being focussed entirely on financial abuse. What about all the other types? Previous definitions are helpful and will still be used locally e.g. No Secrets.
• Local Authorities will probably need to produce their own practice guidance and the vagueness of the White Paper supports this.
• There could be differentiation across Local Authority boundaries which could be a risk.
• Welcome the wording “adult at risk” rather than vulnerable adult.
• Needs to state Local Authorities must liaise with other agencies.
• Is there a plan to work with ADASS to flesh out the detail into practical guidance? Would be a useful way forward.
More Clarity is needed on the definitions of abuse.
I agree with the suggestions that the examples of abuse should be extended beyond purely financial ones to include mental, verbal and physical abuse. Also I would have thought that there ought to be some examples of what is covered by “neglect”. I agree with Hilary Paxton that we should be talking about investigations not enquiries – the important thing is to ascertain early on whether there is a genuine case to investigate.
” the important thing is to ascertain early on whether there is a genuine case to investigate.”
Excuse me but what on earth have people been doing since No Secrets was , produced as guidance”?
This comment only confirms those actually given the lead in undertaking safeguarding work just are not up to the mark. As a lawyer wrote elsewhere the the whole area shows a high degree of inconsistency in approach and attitude and the questions in this bill do not address this or the very widely varying judgements made by individuals and their seniors as to what constitutes abuse / serious harm.
The failure to include the rather growing number of ‘public institution abuses/ harm’ e.g. NHS, Residential/ nursing care etc. where the extent of harm to the most vulnerable is rather greater now- if they die it will be put down to old age- yet entirely hidden even from many family members; with a very great degree of serious back covering by the whole system when formal complaints are raised. Just go to Talking Point – The Alzheimer’s blog for carers, it makes for very distressing experiences of dealing with social services / NHS for far too many struggling to care. People are rather careful on this site because AlZsoc rules are rather overly restrictive.
1 (a) indicates that safeguarding is only for those people who have needs. I am concerned that the support and actions availabel under safeguarding would not be available to those who “may have needs”. There is an opportunity for authorities to respond to safeguarding referrals with an assessment of need, which is fine except for those cases where access to the person is blocked by an abusive person (regardless of whether the person has capacity or not.) There is an obvious link here with the power of entry/access consultation that recently concluded.
If the person has capacity and refuses an assessment then we are in the realms of unwise decisions and should only proceed in accordance with domestic violence good practice.
I agree with others’ comments that the detail on just financial abuse is misleading/puzzling. I propose the following categories are added to the list of 7 categories in No Secrets (and see Hilary Paxton, 10 August): self-neglect, hate crime (aka disability-related harassment), domestic abuse, forced marriage. My recent analysis of local authority websites indicated that these categories are included in many multi-agency policies and procedures on adult safeguarding.
I agree with others’ views that the term ‘enquiry’ should be replaced with ‘investigation’. Or, perhaps the use of both terms might be acceptable? (‘Enquiry or investigation’).
I too think that the phrase ’cause to be made’ is problematic and will need to be tied in with earlier clauses on cooperation and integration.
It is not clear why the draft Bill refers to an Enquiry when most adult protection/ safeguarding personnel embark on investigations as specified in policies and procedures. According to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (2002) an “Enquiry” is an act of asking for information and an “Investigation” is a systematic or formal inquiry into an incident or allegation so as to establish the truth. We would favour the latter since the adult protection/ safeguarding lexicon shifts and changes without much thought to the implications for both professionals and non-professionals who may find themselves subject to adult protection/ safeguarding actions.
Although it is helpful to put boundaries around the unwieldy term “abuse,” the examples of (2) a-d hinge on the crime of theft. We recognise that different forms of financial abuse like mass marketing scams, investment scams, dating and romance, banking and clairvoyant scams which rely on the phone, post, emails and the internet for example are proliferating, and by raising these examples it is clear that the message is that safeguarding is the responsibility of all local Authority departments, not just social care. Given that the most typical form of abuse includes elements of physical, psychological/ emotional, financial, sexual assault and neglect, it is not clear why fraud, pressure around property or inheritance are given such prominence. advanced. Although m ass marketing scams, investment scams, dating and romance, banking and clairvoyant scams which rely on the phone, post, emails and the internet for example are proliferating, there is not a great deal that adult protection/ safeguarding personnel can do – more usually these are primarily police and trading standards matters.
We are concerned that the definition of abuse under this section is not wide enough. It should be expanded to include reference to the other types of abuse within this definition.
We also believe that the duty to cooperate in such enquiries should be made explicit here.
I agree with the above comment by Steve Wellings. I would reccomend that you use the definition of abuse proposed by Action Against Elder Abuse, ‘A single or repeated act or lack of appropriate action, occurring within any relationship
where there is an expectation of trust, which causes harm or distress to an older
person’, and that you make specific mention of the catergories of abuse listed by Hilary Paxton.
My experience is that even with extensive evidence of financial abuse nothing is done about it. The Police do not want to know at all and leave the case hanging for months whilst all the evidence is not properly assessed and the offender gets away. A recent court case found that if a person was seen as helping a vulnerable person and they did not hold an EPA.LPA or Court of Protection court order they could do anything they liked with the vulnerable persons mopney as the had no duty to account.