Safeguarding in Health and Social Care

This article discusses the reasons why certain individuals and groups may be vulnerable to abuse or harm in health and social care contexts, reviews risk factors that may lead to abuse and self-harm, analyzes the impact of social and cultural factors on different types of abuse, and evaluates existing working practices and strategies designed to minimize abuse. It also provides information on legislation and policies implemented by the government to eradicate abuse and create a healthier society, and discusses the effectiveness of working practices and strategies used to minimize abuse in health and social care contexts.

Safeguarding in Health and Social Care
Task 1.1: Explain why particular individuals and groups may
vulnerable to abuse or/and harm staff and others.
Abuse can be simply defined total neglect such as ignoring physical or medical care
requirements and avoiding access to health, welfare and social needs such as
educational services or preventing one from any necessities of life like drinks,
heating, food, shelter e.t.c. which is legally defined as violating human rights.
In health and social care organisation, it is total mistreatment by any other person or
a group of people which can occur anywhere at any time such workplace, day
centre, hospital, nursing home or residential educational establishment, street or in
supported living house.
Abuse can be in any shape or form just to mention major types of abuse.
Sexual, Financial or materials, Physical e.g hitting, punching, slapping e.t.c
Psychological or emotional neglect and Act of omission, discriminatory, institutional,
self-neglect.
Particular individual and groups could be vulnerable to abuse and harm to self and
others due to some facts such as disability, lack of mental capacity, age or
vulnerability and mainly they depend on or need the help of others to accomplish
their immediate and daily needs or tasks. These categories of people are under
continuous vigilance of service provider to safeguard them from various abuse such
as hitting themselves or others unconsciously. Other groups or individuals could be
abused due to their vulnerability and cannot safeguard themselves and are mostly
abused by their service provider (health carer) by taking such advantage of their lack
of consciousness or vulnerability.
❖ There are four major categories of groups or individuals that are
vulnerable to abuse:
1. Elderly people or the small kids that suffer from any mental or physical
disability (Baldock et al., 2011)
2. Vulnerable groups in this category consist of minority people from a specific
background e.g religions such as Sikhs or people brought to a certain place
by force such as prison because such individuals could be exposed to abuse
by the prison officers.
3. Homeless, drug addict, alcoholics are also vulnerable to abuse as they lose
their sanity whenever they are under the influence of drugs or alcohol they are
totally prone to abuse such as neglect and more popularly sexual abuse.
4. Self-harming or self-injuring individuals are mostly triggered by an abuse
whereby such individual is inflicting pain on his / herself in order to overcome
problem as this pain serves as a relief methods for internal anxiety and agony
they are going through, self-injury can be so extreme sometimes that it can
lead to great health risk, disability and in some serious cases suicide.

A major response to these abuses is mainly to approach the situation calmly
and patiently and deal with the situation around the abuse by giving both
physical and emotional support such as encouraging various creative
activities in order to engage individuals to the desist from such act of self-
harm, addiction etc.
Also, practice regular contacts to give them confident support that help is
always around.
1.2 Review risk factors which may lead to the incidence of abuse
and/or self-harm and other
Various types of risks are linked which causes abuse and self-harm.
This risk factor depends on some certain keys for instance, physically challenged
people will always rely on someone to help them in some certain needs due to the
incapability of achieving such tasks for example personal care, on their own which
may require assistance, sometimes the carer gets annoyed with the demands of
their service users which ultimately leads to grief and abuse. Sometimes not giving
an accurate account to the vulnerable adult or aged people will lead to loss of trust
and young children could also be at the risk factors like problems in parents
relationship, violent nature of the child itself or parents.
The figure below shows factors associated with the risk of incidents of abuse and
self-harm and others.
The figure above demonstrates how various types of risk factors are connected with different
kind of abuses e.g. poverty may cause self-abuse or suicidal tendency while a son may
physically abuse their parents if requested needs were not formally granted.
Risks factors are mainly categorised under social and cultural factors in the above
figure. While social factors are mainly unemployment and poverty because poor
people are not well treated in the society, health factor risk also affect old aged

people and the patient as they are not able to solely cater for themselves, also
people that are socially isolated are open to abuse and they lack required emotional
help, another social factor is housing, if elderly or vulnerable people depend on
younger members of family financially they could face abuse when requesting for
financial need.
Cultural factors such as ethnicity background abuse by consumption of alcohol or
drugs due to ethnicity, status or individual background can deteriorate one’s physical
health and wellbeing. Discrimination on the ground of colour, race, gender, sex and
finally the religion with less number of people are more vulnerable to abuse.
Various risk factor causes different kinds of abuse but the most usual one is physical
abuse.
Isolation is when an individual is totally left alone or being ignored he or she is
vulnerable to emotional abuse.
1.3 Analyse the impact of social and cultural factors on different
types of abuse or harm to herself and others
The various social vice that could lead to abuse is housing, education, health, social
exclusion and disadvantages, support network, poverty while cultural factors could
be ethnicity, religion, discrimination in terms of language, colour and background.
The social factors constitute the longest impact on a person's well-being as
individuals with low social economic stature will always operate on the low esteem
that will lead to inability to access good education standard, good standard of health
in a case of poverty where individual could not be able to afford all the above-stated
life essential commodities and are not able to access any state financial support due
to limitation on their immigration status (such as no recourse to public funds) in the
UK. for instance. In a case of a woman that was supposed to be evicted by Court
bailiff and has nowhere to stay with a young child, this may lead that kind of family to
greater abuse if not for the intervention of the bailiffs, the local council has denied the
family any support on the ground of their immigration status.
Socioeconomic status is highly complex as it contains health quality with education,
income generation and good housing. These create unfair and unnecessary
inequalities which have led most people to long-term health impairments, sickness
and emotional abuse.
The cultural factors as stated constitute discrimination within the racial background,
colour, creed or caste open the vulnerable adults mostly are often neglected due to
these factors by various health workers, this discrimination cause grave havoc by
physical abuse and isolate the adults to sort the issues of health on their own.
This situation is coming among the minority elders in East London as people with
discriminated caste have little access to the major/ fundamental health cares, due to
low life esteem these factors have contributed to their health issues and lead them to

be mentally stressed so also another serious sickness that sometimes takes their
lives or leaves them disabled for the rest of their life.
A rise in blood pressure problems has diversity related to racial discrimination in
adults which further add to severe anxiety and sufferer of all these ailments avoid
themselves from the people community.
Other abuses that could impact the social and cultural factors are sexual abuse as
the individual are open to a form of forced sex, such as rape, incest inappropriate
touch e.t.c due to the low life standard this can happen even in residential care
worker, daycare worker, social care worker or personal assistant and these could
lead to viral sexual disease among adults and can lead to loss of trust by the elders
in the carer.
3.1 Explain Existing working practice is strategies designed to
minimise abuse in health and social care contexts
Various healthcare organisation practice in numerous ways, day in day out in order
to stop or reduce abuse in all sector, but the menace of abuse is rapidly growing
which brings various specific measures to prevent them. Government intervention in
Health care sector promotes greater measures to solve the problems, by the
enactment of legislation, procedure and policy to eradicate abuse and creation of a
healthier society in which everyone has to respect individuals interests and opinion
irrespective of any socio-cultural context.
Some of the legislation and policies implemented by the government in order
to eradicate abuse include:
Whistleblowing
The procedure of Complaint in Care homes
Policy of confidentiality
The policy of Physical intervention
The Care Standards Act of 2002
Every child matters policy 2003
Children's Act of 2004
As a support worker working with vulnerable adults and young adults, we experience
not much of physical abuse except from one out all our residents who are a bit
challenging and violent but other abuses such as emotional abuse, financial abuse,
accidents such as slips and falls cannot be left out in my place of work.
Due to the above stated factors my management tried to implement various strategic
measures to control these various abuses such as in the case of the violent adult
who always hit his head on the wall and causes himself a great self-harm, we always
assign one-to-one service provider for him who monitors him all round in 24-hours
working on 8 hrs shift booking. Whenever he sees staff working around, he hardly
inflicts any harm on himself, we also have a body map chart for recording every mark
and bruises on his body this is kept for safeguarding so that every mark could be

accounted for if required by further questioning by bodies like CQC or other
Healthcare professionals.
Finances and expenses are recorded on daily basis in order to control funds
mismanagement, each individual in my place of work have his/her account record
where their various financial expenses are recorded and balanced on each day, this
builds a great trust between our service users and management.
In a situation whereby a member of staff suffers emotional abuse from the service
user such as discrimination under racial ground, there is always a conflict
resolution form that a staff can fill to express his/her grievance or complain about
these kinds of situation and what they believe could be the best resolution to avoid
conflict or further abuse. This sometimes happens at my workplace and it is always
well resolved by the conflict resolution management.
It is part of my management policy to operate a communication book which serves
as a source of information centre for all members of staff, it is a confidential
document that explains the new development concerning the home and sometimes a
service user.
My organisation also equips all staff with various developmental training e.g. Conflict
Management, Mental Capacity, Terrorism courses in order to have an in-depth
knowledge of our working environment so as to work efficiently in person-centred
oriented ‘Care standard Act 2002’ and Quality control commission CQC is another
legislative arm that has great impact on myself and other staffs and my entire
organisation in order to operate legally and environment where abuse is at zero
tolerance, treating everyone with dignity, respect irrespective of their background.
3.2 Evaluate the effectiveness of working practice and strategies
used to minimise abuse in health and social care context
The protection of vulnerable adults (POVA) is a scheme that was introduced in
Wales and England in 2004, as required by the Care Standard 2000 Act. This
comprised the list of people that are not fit to render service for vulnerable adults in
Wales and England (Hodges and Northway 2019).
These kinds of people could be referred by various organisation employees or
managers to undertake checks alongside POVA list and CRB disclosure if they are
applying to work in any Health care sector.
POVA focus on providing effective support to their client where employees
should be hired only where they are with minimum two references before working in
any organisation which provides care to the vulnerable adults. CRB checks is also
involved when any one like to work in this care sector. There are various pros and
cons of POVA scheme which are going to be discussed further.
Pros-
 It allows to feel safe and secure in this care environment.

 It prevents large population from applying for the job who may have chances
to harm others, this allows to ensure about vulnerable adults protection.
 It ensure family member to stay free form any worry and provides peace of
mind.
Cons-
 POVA scheme increase additional paperwork which is time taking. It also
increases administrative procedures for the care providers.
 It also enable care providers to re-think about offering care to certain
individuals, this can involve the re-running recruitment exercise.
A partnership has been established since 2005 in every CQC area by POVA action
of “Safeguarding adults” Inspectors of safeguarding can solve any safeguarding
issues arise from concerns about the manager's fitness in any organisation,
registered service or person a breach of Care standard Act 2000, the CQC could
mainly be the investigating agency. A safeguarding process should be implemented
through a case conference which is normally reviewed within six months.
Whistleblowing can also be referred to as a good practice to minimise abuse but has
some disadvantages for instance of a group of staff in a certain organisation that are
from same ethnic background, it will be very difficult to whistleblowing about each
other, to avoid this organisation needs to employ different ethnicity employees.
There is various advantage of whistle-blowing which are as follows-
 It helps to identity gaps in care services. This can be effective and allows
individual to evaluate the gap which is there in the effective practices.
 It also help to avoid the risk of abuse and allows everyone to raise their
concern and problems (Han and et. al., 2018). This can helpful in getting
better and effective response for better outcomes.
 This allows raise the concern when there is any problem in the practices.
This helps higher authority to take action regarding concern to improve the
services.
Working in partnership and communication is very vital in reducing and preventing
abuse in the health care sector, without this there will be more cases like Victoria
Climbie and baby P to reoccur in the future.
Partnership working is good because it allows to work effectively and focuses
on the sharing of resources and idea that can help in delivering better and support to
their client. This also enable to deliver quality of care and proper safety that can help
to ensure client's safety with taking proper care. This enable them to share resources
and help each other to take care of client effectively.
There are many benefits of partnership working which can help to provide
better and effective care to client for their improved health.
 This can help in sharing of information with patient.
 Reduce the chance of duplication of assessment along with services.
 Helps to improve the understanding in team roles and allow to
contribute in care services more effectively.
 It also helps to reduce the domestic abuse in early stage and provides
safety and protection to vulnerable adults.

 It also provide opportunity to learn different practices that can help to
improve the quality of services.
 This also helps to improve the safeguarding practices through involving
communication and accountability with care providers and clients.
There is disadvantages of partnership working which are discussed further.
 There is chances of abuse or neglect within delivery of services.
 There is also chances of miscommunication when there is pressure within
professionals.
 There is also chance of misinterpretation of shared information and difficulty
due to culture or communication barriers (Zai, 2021).
 There is chances of conflict while operation which is due to everyone has their
own agenda to work in partnership and this can lead to create complicit.
To identify the strategies and practices minimising abuse is very important in health
and social care setting and these practice/strategies could be as followed:
Every Child Matters Policy: This applied to children's well-being and young people
from birth until the age of 19, it was based on the fact that every child, irrespective of
their individual circumstances or background should enjoy maximum support
throughout their lives.
The five major key principles of the policy are:
1. To stay safe
2. To live a healthy life
3. To make a positive contribution
4. To accomplish and enjoy
5. To sustain or achieve economic well-being
After the issues of Victoria Climbie, this policy came into existence in 2003 when
most health and social care professionals are not working in partnership that led to
the Demise of Victoria Climbie.
After evaluating the cause which was includes the safe environment and
safety concern along with not working with other professionals for taking care
effectively to the child. Due to the case of Victoria Climbie who was the victim of
abuse and neglect lead to make the policy necessary into existence. This policy was
need to take care of every children for protection through any neglect and safety
when getting care services. There should not be any type of harm or neglect to any
child and should ensure about their protection and care services effectively at the
care settings.
Today, through safeguarding health and social care sectors are under serious
obligation to make sure that the services rendered two children keep them safe and
are not under any unacceptable risk of harm.
There are many advantages and disadvantages of every child matter policy where
some of the main advantages and disadvantages are listed below-
Advantages-
 This policy influence children with special needs should be categorised to get
better care as children in need.

 It also ensures the minimal disruption on children life and helps to keep family
together during any emergency care orders.
 It also help to identity when there is need for special care and needs can be
identified easily.
Disadvantages-
 There are additional paper work and its hard to maintain the record of each
child with each procedure.
 All professionals are not able to follow the procedures.
 It is hard to take care of large number of children at a time which can create
gap in ensure about care and services to each child.
 Through this policy, there is need to focus on each child and this can leads to
decrease the focus on the child who needs more focus and are most
vulnerable.
Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults: As they are very special people in the society
they required support from the society and the entire nation, it's quite the
responsibility of the nation to support and protect them to acquire and live a
sustainable standard of life through health and social care sector or Department of
Health.
Abuse has created the negative menace on our society as the people that suffer it
loose individual hope, interests and desires of life; It was a great social issue in our
community and government should implement proper regulations and rules to fight it
as it impacts on civilisation and development might be derailed.
There are various advantages and disadvantages of safeguarding vulnerable adults
which are going to be discussed further.
Advantages-
 This enable to get better relationships with other working professionals and care
providers.
 It also encourage more in-depth investigation in organisation.
 It also help to reduce the substantiating alleged abuse.
Disadvantages-
 Due to increased specialisation can create conflict with operational social workers.
 It also reduce continuity vulnerable adults.
 It also reduce deskilling of other non-specialist social worker.
3.3 discuss possible improvements to work practice and strategies
to minimise abuse in health and social care context.
As abuse Is the violation if an individual civil and human rights by any person or
group of persons in order to minimise abuse in health and social care contexts, we
need to identify those who are being abused and the type of abuse they might be
prone to. Vulnerable adults are the people in need of community care service due to
their mental and other disabilities, illness, age or unable to render good care for
themselves and they may face such as discrimination, sexual, physical and
emotional abuse to mention a few (Guo and et. al., 2018).
From my personal understanding and experience partnership, working system is a
very vital measure to minimise labour abuse in social care sector according to the

demise of Victoria Climbie and baby P, one could respectively see the lack of
partnership, how inefficient effective communication contributed to the death the two
innocent children.
Partnership and enhances the well-being and safety of service users. Working in
collaboration does not only promote government objectives but also promote safer
and better care package and individual support. Different health professionals and
stakeholders may have specific expertise, in adhering to various codes of practice
and indicator of performance may still vary but the entire team will still focus on the
health and wellbeing of the individuals.
In health and social care partnership working is mainly delivered between a
multidisciplinary capacity such as Care staff, Day service staff, Mental health service,
Social services and Occupational therapy and these eradicate abuse.
Partnership working will enhance transparency which will quickly review any abuse
from any sector of care providers to another unlike when service is privatised and
abuse are concealed by an organisation.
This can be act as whistleblowing where unethical practices or wrong
practices can be reported to the organisation that can have chances of harm or
abuse to vulnerable adults. Whistleblowing is the process in which there is complain
and report against the wrong practices. Through complaining and report of false
practice can lead to matter of investigation and lead to punishment. Fear of legal
punishment can help to decease the chances of abuse occurring. This is highly
effective and due to fear of getting legal action when there is any type of complain or
concern then, people can get impact on the services delivery and whistleblowing can
lead allow to make practices in ethical way to ensure the safety of vulnerable adults.
Other measures that can minimise abuse in the social health care sector is by
creating risk assessment that should be handed over to responsible personnel and is
followed to improve work strategies (Calabrese and et. al., 2017). As an allocated
person will be capable of implementing quality control system and environment and
the allocated person also manages the risk of the organisation, education such as
training needs to be in place to update every worker about how conflict and abuse
could be managed.
Services should also be rendered with a person-centred oriented system whereby
the service user is at the centre of activities around and his/her dignity and choice
will be respected, this will always give the service users the confidence to operate
without the fear of abuse on his personal right (Mantilla, 2021).
Complaint procedure should be considered in order to report or complain about
grievances, it is important in any registered Health care providers. This procedure
enables the grievance or complaint being investigated or responded to by service
managers, CQC is basically in charge of this register and they may sometimes
decide to carry out an investigation depending on the situation of such complaint.
Finally, whistleblowing in the sense that poor practice can be quickly reported and an
instant investigation is also put in place by CQC there are various numbers and
process to escalate whistleblowing and protect one's identity and individual right.

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