Safeguarding in Health And Social Care

This essay examines the issue of safeguarding in health and social care, analyzing a case study of abuse against an elderly woman. It explores the vulnerability of individuals and groups to abuse, identifies risk factors, and evaluates existing practices and strategies for minimizing abuse. The essay concludes with recommendations for improving safeguarding measures in health and social care settings.

Safeguarding in Health And
Social Care

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
1.1 Explain why particular individuals and groups may be vulnerable to abuse and/ or harm to
self and others.............................................................................................................................1
1.2 Review the risk factors associated with the incidence of abuse and harm to self and others.
.....................................................................................................................................................2
TASK 2...........................................................................................................................................3
3.1 Explain existing practices and strategies designed to minimize abuse for health care
professionals................................................................................................................................3
3.2 Evaluating these working policies and practices suggested..................................................4
3.3 Recommendations for dealing with the abuse......................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES .............................................................................................................................5
Payne, M., 2012. Citizenship social work with older people. Policy Press.
..........................................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
The health and social care exists because there are some patients who needs special care
because they are not getting the extra care which they actually requires. The family of these
people wants to give them the best care that' why they send their family members to the health
and social care centres and expect that these centres can be trusted (Braye, Orr and Preston-
Shoot, 2011). But in Hillcroft nursing home there is a abuse case against the staff of the nursing
home because there are some eight residents who are the victims of social care staff. The report
covers the abuses and their legislations that are supports to the elders and other victims.
TASK 1
1.1 Explain why particular individuals and groups may be vulnerable to abuse and/ or harm to
self and others.
According to the given case study, the people who depends on others are targeted to
abuse and specially those who are above 70 age. Since they are not well some of them mental
and physical illness because of the ill health they can't protests to save themselves from getting
hurt by the abusers. The abusers take the advantage of this and the old lady get abused sue to
lack of capacity. The abuses, harm or danger can be refer to the negligence of the service user if
the care taker is not giving an attention to the user who really needs the help instead of, that they
are tying to hurt them that is sign of danger or harm for that targeted patients. There is a lady in
the case study, who was being abused due to her inability and dependency on others and that is
the main reason that she can't escaped from the abusers.
It can be seen so many times that people learn abuse others from their families or parents
because it is often happens that children learn what they see in childhood and that is what they
follow in their life. They learn abusing to themselves and others as they seen to do the same by
their parents and hence, the feelings and thoughts remain in their mind for life long and abuses
becomes common for such people (Brown, 2011).
As the health department, adults vulnerable to abuse are defined as the people who are
either eighteen years or over and who may require the community care service as being a mental
or physical disability, more than sixty by age or illness or may be they are not able to take care
themselves and they cannot protest against the abuse. Vulnerable people can be refers as the
people who are victim of domestic violence, homeless people, drug addicts in their own life
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previously that and that results in frustration because of that nature they are being harmful to
others. People including those who have faced so many painful situations can be dangerous to
various kinds of abuses. Individuals and groups are vulnerable due to such factors -
 Lack of mental capacity
 Age
 Physical dependency on others
 Low self – esteem
 Social isolations and so on.
1.2 Review the risk factors associated with the incidence of abuse and harm to self and others.
There are so many types of abuses where the victim feels blameful and afraid. These
abuses can be physical, emotional, communicative, sexual, financial, negligence and so on
(Gardner, 2014). In the case study, the abuser aimed at an elder lady who was distressed due a
disease and who was also dependent for care but the care taker abused her as she was not able to
respond the abuser wrong intentions. There are so many reasons that put a person in a high risk
factors and for elder people the risk factors abuse includes -
 Psychological state in the people
 less support and attention from the caregivers
 substance abuse that refers to the harmful attack
 caregivers inability to adjust with the patient.
Moreover, the risk factors can be broadly classified into three categories namely, individual
family factors, family factors or social factors. The individual family factors includes any kind
of disability, any physical or mental disorder, combative behaviour, mood swings and lack of
attention. The family risk can be abusing by family, involvement in criminal behaviour, family
violence or regular conflicts, high family stress less interactions with family members,
separations, etc. The social or environment risks factors includes socio – economic disadvantage,
unemployment, social discrimination, lack of access to social support, discrimination or bias and
stressful live events. The elder people suffers from abuse due to their dependencies and illnesses.
This dependency on others or their disorders shuffles them in order to get rid out of abusive
situations and take any action against it (Grant and Kinman, 2012). In these kind of cases the
victim feels trapped and powerless due to fear and disappointment. As the case study describes
that an elderly woman suffers from abuse at the hand of caretaker on whom she was dependent
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for the needs and care. When the caretaker did something wrong with her she was not able to
take the action against due to the helplessness.
The risk factor can be define as so many abuses and self – harm, it is require to
understand the risk factors which is important to help working professionals to justify such
abuses to look for ways to restrict them and help the victims to get by with abuses (Harris and
Leather, 2011).
TASK 2
3.1 Explain existing practices and strategies designed to minimize abuse for health care
professionals.
There is a strict requirement of the safe guarding the elders. Since the elders are more
endangered to the health care related abuse so it becomes necessary to understand the practices
and strategies that are already exists and can also be beneficial for minimizing the abuses.
Abuses can made negative impacts on the lives of people and the cruelty of the negative
impact depends on various factors such as how much the victim has been abused, how well the
victim is associated with the abuser and what are their actions in order to dismiss the abuses.
Scenario 1 : As it states that there is a patient who is taken care by the care manager and
one of the member of the social health care received the amount in their personal account there
is a fraudulent activity and not only this the will and property papers are also altered by them so
they have violated a data protection act that may be because of the mental capacity is not good or
they might get tortured very badly that's why the patient took such a drastic step. This made a
negative impact on the victims family (Kline and Preston-Shoot, 2012).
 Type of abuses – Physical
 Health and social care worker – The care agents in the institutions should get a training to
maintain the confidential information and behaviour with the patient.
 Impact – Negative on the family and service user.
Scenario 2 : In this scenario a victim is 14 years old girl and who complains against her
parents that she is forcefully taken to other location to follows a ritual which is ban and illegal.
This is kind of physical and mental torture that the girl is going through because of her mother.
Her mother is also not realizing that this is a crime because of her culture what she have seen
through out her life and that is the same what she is applying to her daughter too. This kind of
abuses is mental and physical torture.
 Type of abuses – Mental and physical
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 Health and social care worker – The social care worker should take an action against the
complaint and rescue the girl from the illegal rituals.
 Impact – Negative.
3.2 Evaluating these working policies and practices suggested
The policies and practices are established by the government for beneficial of the service
user and working health and social care centres. These policies can be define as -
Data protection act – In scenario 1, the care taker should follow the data protection act,
to keep the patient's secrets confidential and never break the rules to offer the effective services.
Whistle blowing strategies and legislation : This is applied on a place where one has a
complete knowledge. In this strategy if there is any possibilities of decrease in health will get
reduce and efficiency and effectiveness of the workers increased (Payne, 2012).
3.3 Recommendations for dealing with the abuse
There is always a space for improvement in the policies and strategies that can be cahnge
with time to put more effective practices. The continuous improvement development is essential
cause there is nothing which can be change in one minute so continue improvement is better to
put new effective system, such as -
 Risk factor assessment can be done in order to get the knowledge of intended harm.
 The mental patients should give extra protective care so that they cannot be harm to
themselves and others.
 The health and social care institutions should adopt the policies and strategies to run an
organization smoothly with code of conduct that must be followed by all the employees.
CONCLUSION
The above report is about the safeguarding in health and social care, there is a case study
about the abuses that a victim survive through and the expected causes of abuse along with risk
factors on the behalf of scenario and the strategies, policies and recommendations.
REFERENCES
Books and Journals
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Braye, S., Orr, D. and Preston-Shoot, M., 2011. Conceptualising and responding to self-neglect:
the challenges for adult safeguarding. The Journal of Adult Protection. 13(4). pp.182-
193.
Brown, K., 2011. ‘Vulnerability’: handle with care. Ethics and social welfare. 5(3). pp.313-321.
Gardner, A., 2014. Personalisation in social work. Learning Matters.
Grant, L. and Kinman, G., 2012. Enhancing wellbeing in social work students: Building
resilience in the next generation. Social Work Education. 31(5). pp.605-621.
Harris, B. and Leather, P., 2011. Levels and consequences of exposure to service user violence:
Evidence from a sample of UK social care staff. British Journal of Social Work. 42(5).
pp.851-869.
Kline, R. and Preston-Shoot, M., 2012. Professional accountability in social care and health:
challenging unacceptable practice and its management. Learning Matters.
Payne, M., 2012. Citizenship social work with older people. Policy Press.
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