Health and Social Care: Safeguarding Individuals and Groups at Risk

This report delves into the critical aspects of safeguarding within health and social care settings. It defines safeguarding as the protection of vulnerable individuals, including children and adults, from harm, abuse, and exploitation. The report explores the factors that contribute to vulnerability, such as family conflicts, mental health issues, and socio-economic conditions, using the case study of baby Peter to illustrate these points. It examines the influence of social and cultural factors on different forms of abuse, including physical and emotional abuse, highlighting how factors like socio-economic status and cultural norms can increase the risk of abuse. The report concludes by emphasizing the complex interplay of factors that lead to abuse and the importance of understanding these dynamics to prevent harm.

Safeguarding in Health and
Social care.

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
1.1)Justify why individuals and groups may be vulnerable to abuse and harm to self and
others......................................................................................................................................1
1.2)Examine the influence of social and cultural factors on different kinds of abuse:..........2
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3

INTRODUCTION
Safeguarding can be defined as protecting undefended adults and small children from being
harmed through abuse , exploitation or any other way. It can also be described as reducing the
risk factors of important harm from being ill treated by different person. as now a days there are
many crimes which have been carried out in order to harm women as well as small kids. This
report will cover the factors that results to the incidence of abuse and harm to self and others. It
will also cover the impact of social and culture factors on different types of abuse. This
assignment will discuss the case study of baby named as peter who was found dead with the
sever injuries in his bodies and the factors that had influence the abuse of that baby.
TASK 1
1.1)Justify why individuals and groups may be vulnerable to abuse and harm to self and others.
There have been many cases in which abuse molestation and exploitation or the major crimes
starts from the family only(Lucas and et. al., 2016). For example, if a child is grown up seeing all
the negative incidents like domestic violence, harassment and molestation in his family than they
will always have a mindset of being abused by most of the people. The person who has been
suffering from mental trauma or pressure are also unprotected to different kinds of abuses. Some
of the components which are related to abuse are as follows.
 Family conflicts : In some of the families, violence is considered as the result for mental
stress and this stress is continued for generation to generation. Family conflicts like
domestic violence, harassement and physical abusing are the major reasons for it. As per
the case study,the family background of whole family was abusive where she and her
brother were the witness of domestic violence due to which abuse and molestation was
occurred(Lindert and et.al., 2014). In the current scenario,the step father use to molest
and harass both wife as well as the baby peter which results in abuse.
 Medical and psychological problem: In many cases, mental illness is the major cause of
abusing self and others. There are various case studies in which it has been described that
a mentally unstable person use to harm self and others also which shows the abusive
nature of that person. In the case study of , baby peter the fathers mental condition was
not stable due to which he use to abuse her wife through domestic violence , seeing all
this environment of the house baby peter was also mentally abused.
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1.2)Examine the influence of social and cultural factors on different kinds of abuse:
The social and cultural factors are the major threats through which an individual or a group
may be vulnerable to abuse \harm self and others. a person can be suffered from the following
types of abuse which are given below.
Physical abuse: This type of abuse is related to human actions that causes injuries as well as
health problems. This type of abuse is generally held with children's and adults in the form of
domestic violence and frustration.
 Social factor that is composed of education, financial condition and economic condition.
This factor has a very serious impact over persons health(Berns, 2017). Due to low socio
economic status of a family,it leads to inability to access the health care services and low
education. Socio-economic status refers to unemployment, home, approach to health
care ,income and education(Runyon, Deblinger and Steer , 2014.). These all things results
in physical violence. Like in the case of peters death, their socio-economic condition was
very complicated due to which Mr H used to torture his mother for their will and due to
lack of income most of the times both husband and wife have conflicts between them,and
due to this Mrs .A used to suffer from domestic violence, she was physically abused by
her husband which creates a very deep impact over the mental condition of the baby
peter, and this results in the sever death of baby peter.
 The cultural factor also have a great impact over physical abuse. As in today's society,
man tends to be the powerful as well as superior as compared to the women(Rössler and
et.al., 2016). Females always have to undergo various abuse like domestic violence,
harrasement and molestation by the men. In the above case of baby peter, half of the
women were sexually harassed by men even the mother was molested by the father . So
due to cultural difference for females most of the crimes occur as it is a male dominating
society .
Emotional abuse: This type of abuse occurs due to humiliation, non acceptance. Due to
rejection and continuous humiliation the person undergoes depression and this may affect the
mental condition of a individual which leads to a abusive nature.
 The cultural factor includes the favouritism among the race , gender and
caste(Safeguarding Adults in Health and Social Care.2017). This factor is the main
reason behind abuse. For example in the case of peter, most of the females in there
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families were the victims of physical assault. Which results in unstable conditions of the
females they were disturbed, tortured and sexually abused by the others which lead to the
death of the baby.The social and economic condition of peters family was very
complicated as there income condition was very bad due to which the husband and wife
use to fight with each other and due to aggression the husband abuse wife as well as child
domestically. And regular humiliation leads to depression and by this they are
emotionally abused.
CONCLUSION
From the above assignment it can be concluded that there are various reasons through
which a individual is provoked to do abuses like if the person is mentally stables, or due to
family conflict a person use to molest and harass other people. And how the gender cultural
affects the types of abuse. Like the women of peters family had undergone various troubles. And
the impact of income over the emotional abuse.
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REFRENCES
Books and journals
Berns, N.S., 2017. Framing the victim: Domestic violence, media, and social problems.
Routledge.
Lindert, J. and et.al., 2014. Sexual and physical abuse in childhood is associated with depression
and anxiety over the life course: systematic review and meta-analysis. International
journal of public health. 59(2). pp.359-372.
Lucas, P. and et. al., 2016. Increasing men's awareness of the effects on children exposed to
family and domestic violence.
Rössler, W. and et.al., 2016. Childhood trauma as a risk factor for the onset of subclinical
psychotic experiences: Exploring the mediating effect of stress sensitivity in a cross-
sectional epidemiological community study. Schizophrenia research. 172(1-3). pp.46-53.
Runyon, M.K., Deblinger, E. and Steer, R.A., 2014. The research examined whether youth (6–
17 years old) who were referred for treatment due to sexual, physical, or both types of
abuse presented with distinct profiles of PTSD DSM-IV-TR symptom clusters. When
examining data for the 749 youth participants, five PTSD symptom cluster profiles were
identified with each profile representing approximately 20% of the youth. The five profiles
were also differentiated... Child Abuse & Neglect. 38(1). pp.114-122.
ONLINE
Safeguarding Adults in Health and Social Care. 2017. [ONLINE].Available
through:<https://www.educare.co.uk/news/safeguarding-adults-in-health-and-social-care>
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