Agenda item

To consider the annual report of the Haringey Safeguarding Adults Board for the year 2017/18.

Dr Adi Cooper, Independent Chair of the Haringey Safeguarding Adults Board presented the Board’s annual report for 2017/18. The publication of an annual report is one of the three statutory duties that the Board has under the Care Act 2014 and it provides the opportunity to set out the Board’s achievements, priorities and future improvements to the way that vulnerable people are safeguarded. Particular points highlighted by Dr Cooper included:

• That attendance at the Board is good and growing, now including representation from social housing providers and the local DWP.
• The Board has undertaken its first Safeguarding Adult Review (SAR) following the death of Robert which has been helpful in identifying areas for action, development and learning.
• The Board has started to do work across the North Central London (NCL) area to try to develop more aligned ways of working.

In response to questions from members of the panel, Dr Cooper, Beverley Tarka, Director of Adults and Health, John Everson, Assistant Director for Adults and Charlotte Pomery, Assistant Director for Commissioning said:

• That Homes for Haringey (HfH) are a member of the Board. There is not presently any representation from higher education providers but this would be worth exploring.
• With regards to the statement that over 60% of the Board’s financing comes from Council (paragraph 1.9), the remainder of the funding comes from health and the police. There is never enough resources to do everything that the Board would like to do but there are conversations ongoing at national, regional and local levels about contributions from partners and about how to make the best use of the resources that are available.
• The SAR had been taken to the suicide prevention group which had been helpful although suicide prevention does not necessarily fit neatly into adult safeguarding.
• Processes put in place since the SAR mean that principal social workers now sit on the panels with housing colleagues in cases where vulnerabilities have been identified. This does not change HfH protocols but allows for knowledge on vulnerabilities to be explored as part of discussions as part of the learning from the SAR was that panel at the time didn’t have full understanding of Robert’s circumstances. An action plan for the SAR will include monitoring the embedding of new practices. Members with concerns about individual cases can raise these through Astrid Kjellberg-Obst, Executive Director of Operations at HfH.
• With regards to the outstanding action points on paragraph these were completed or ongoing as stated except for the one on staffing where there was a revised date although there had been some recent success in recruiting permanent staff to the vacant posts and the end was to complete this by the end of the year.
• The community alarm system (known as Lifeline) has its own operational performance information and so this was not included in the report but this information could be made available if required. Any safeguarding alerts originating from this system would be included within the report.
• The improvements to staff awareness about Making Safeguarding Personal (MSP) (paragraph 2.2.1) predominantly refers to Council staff although the expectation should be that staff from all partners would endeavour to work in this way. Evidencing that kind of data would likely require multi-agency case file audit work. The sub-group on quality assurance is developing a multi-agency audit tool which could help to collect this kind of data in future and further information is likely to be available in the next annual report.
• On the NCL learning event in Nov 2017 (paragraph 2.3), another event was planned this December so this was becoming an annual event and would help to improve joint strategic planning year on year across the sub-region.
• The delivery of safeguarding training (paragraph 2.4.1) in the care sector could be challenging because of the high turnover of staff but a lot of work with partners on workforce development was ongoing across the NCL area, including by developing portability of training between providers and maximising resources available to support training.
• There are aspirations to develop joint working with the Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) through the action plan for this year. National changes around LSCBs are currently ongoing.
• On the low levels of MCA and DoLS training take-up at North Middlesex hospital (paragraph 3.4), Dr Cooper agreed to request an update be requested from North Middlesex and provide these details to the panel in due course. (Action: Dr Adi Cooper)
• Three advocacy services had recently been commissioned by the Council, one under the Childrens Act, one on mental health advocacy for adults and one under the Care Act for adults.
• It was difficult to obtain data on the types of abuse that occur within the home, officers agreed to check whether there was any data on this that could be provided. (Action: Charlotte Pomery)
• With regards to the demographic data in section 4 of the report, the reason that household income levels were not provided was because this was not included in the national returns and ward level data was not provided because the numbers were too small to be meaningful. The panel was concerned that information on social class was not available.

In summing up the panel’s recommendations Cllr Connor commented that:

• A short summary capturing the key areas of the annual report would be useful next time given the length of the report.
• It would also be useful to receive information at the next annual report about process on the multi-agency case file audit tool.
• More information should be collected on safeguarding within the home setting and more training could be targeted at people that have access to vulnerable individuals within the home.
• Progress on joint working with the LSCB would be useful in next annual report.
• Information on ward data would be welcomed in the next annual report.
• Any additional learning from the membership of the DWP on the Board would be welcomed in the next annual report.

AGREED: That the Board’s Annual Report for 2017/18 be noted with consideration to be given to the panel’s aforementioned recommendations.