Health and social care agencies have a
responsibility to report any incident where there are grounds to
suggest that a vulnerable adult or child is at risk of suffering
abuse or where there are concerns about a person’s
circumstances.
This is in accordance with Department of
Health guidance as outlined in the document ‘No Secrets’ which,
together with other relevant policy and practice guidance,
can be found on their website.
Our protection of children and vulnerable
adults procedures
We first introduced procedures about the
protection of children and vulnerable adults in November
2003.
These were developed by a multi-agency group,
which included specialists in the field of adult protection and
representatives from voluntary organisations, including Action on
Elder Abuse.
Our policy and process around safeguarding
Our policy offers a process and practice guidance to allow
staff to raise such concerns, which are then reported to the
appropriate agency - most usually the local authority social
services department - to consider what action might need to be
taken.
Our role is not to investigate concerns but
to ensure that they are passed to the relevant agency to take the
appropriate action. This is outlined in our
referral process.
Training in the protection of children and
vulnerable adults has taken place for all frontline staff as part
of the national clinical guidelines programme.
In cases where concerns are raised by
ambulance staff where the matters at issue do not fall within the
scope of the vulnerable adult or child protection procedure, our
protocol requires the completion of an incident report.
During 2008/2009, our staff made 2,982
vulnerable adult and 702 child protection referrals.