Safeguarding Adults Boards
24.13Safeguarding Adults Boards mirror Local Safeguarding Children Boards, with which local authorities, their Board partners and others are already familiar.
24.14The statutory provisions are at sections 43–45 of the Care Act 2014 and The Care and Support Statutory Guidance provides guidance at paragraphs 14.133–14.161, setting out the core duties as follows:
Safeguarding Adults Boards
14.133 Each local authority must set up a Safeguarding Adults Board (SAB). The main objective of a SAB is to assure itself that local safeguarding arrangements and partners act to help and protect adults in its area who meet the criteria set out at paragraph 14.2.
14.134 The SAB has a strategic role that is greater than the sum of the operational duties of the core partners. It oversees and leads adult safeguarding across the locality and will be interested in a range of matters that contribute to the prevention of abuse and neglect. These will include the safety of patients in its local health services, quality of local care and support services, effectiveness of prisons and approved premises in safeguarding offenders and awareness and responsiveness of further education services. It is important that SAB partners feel able to challenge each other and other organisations where it believes that their actions or inactions are increasing the risk of abuse or neglect. This will include commissioners, as well as providers of services.
14.135 The SAB can be an important source of advice and assistance, for example in helping others improve their safeguarding mechanisms. It is important that the SAB has effective links with other key partnerships in the locality and share relevant information and work plans. They should consciously cooperate to reduce any duplication and maximise any efficiency, particularly as objectives and membership is likely to overlap.
14.136 A SAB has 3 core duties:
•It must publish a strategic plan for each financial year that sets how it will meet its main objective and what the members will do to achieve this. The plan must be developed with local community involvement, and the SAB must consult the local Healthwatch organisation. The plan should be evidence based and make use of all available evidence and intelligence from partners to form and develop its plan.
•It must publish an annual report detailing what the SAB has done during the year to achieve its main objective and implement its strategic plan, and what each member has done to implement the strategy as well as detailing the findings of any Safeguarding Adults Reviews and subsequent action.
•It must conduct any Safeguarding Adults Review in accordance with Section 44 of the Act.
14.137 Safeguarding requires collaboration between partners in order to create a framework of inter-agency arrangements. Local authorities and their relevant partners must collaborate and work together as set out in the co-operation duties in the Care Act and, in doing so, must, where appropriate, also consider the wishes and feelings of the adult on whose behalf they are working.
24.15There are three types of review of individual cases undertaken by the Safeguarding Adults Board, where there is reasonable cause for concern about how the Safeguarding Adults Board, members of it or other persons with ‘relevant functions’ have worked together to safeguard the adult, and:
•where the adult has died and the Safeguarding Adults Board knows or suspects that the death result from abuse or neglect (in which case it is mandatory to undertake a review);
•where the adult is still alive and the Safeguarding Adults Board knows or suspects that the adult has experienced serious abuse or neglect (in which case it is mandatory to undertake a review);
•in any other case involving an adult in the area with needs for care and support (whether or not met by the local authority)(in which case a review is not mandatory).
24.16In the second and third of these cases, section 68 of the Care Act 2014 requires the local authority to appoint an ‘independent advocate’, when
•the local authority considers that, without an independent advocate, the individual would experience substantial difficulty in understanding relevant information, retaining that information, using or weighing that information as part of the process of being involve or communicating their views, wishes or feelings;
•and there is no appropriate person (not engaged in providing care or treatment for the individual in a professional or paid capacity) who would be an appropriate person to undertake the ‘independent advocate’ function;
•then, except insofar as it is necessary to take urgent steps, the local authority must arrange for an ‘independent advocate’ to ‘represent and support the adult to whose case the …review relates for the purpose of facilitating his or her involvement in the … review…’; unless
•the local authority is satisfied that there is an appropriate person (not engaged in providing care or treatment for the individual in a professional or paid capacity) who would be an appropriate person to undertake the ‘independent advocate’ function. However, this exception is itself dis-applied by regulation 4 of the Care and Support (Independent Advocacy Support) (No 2) Regulations 2014 when either (i) the NHS is likely to accommodate the individual in hospital for at least 28 days or in a care home for least eight weeks, or (ii) the local authority and the potentially appropriate person disagree on a material issue but agree that the individual should have an ‘independent advocate’.
24.17See ‘Involvement/independent advocates/relevance of Mental Capacity Act 2005’ in chapter 7, para
7.53 for further information about independent advocates.