Agenda item

To consider the annual report of the Haringey Safeguarding Adults Board for 2020/21.

Dr Adi Cooper, Independent Chair of the Haringey Adult Safeguarding Board (HSAB), introduced the Board’s Annual Report for 2020/21 which she explained was one of the Board statutory duties. Dr Cooper said that the Board continued to meet under the unprecedented conditions of Covid restrictions, as did partner agencies. A Safeguarding Covid-19 Task & Finish Subgroup had been set up to monitor responses to the changing conditions on safeguarding caused by the Covid restrictions.

Other groups had varying degrees of success in terms of maintaining their core duties and responsibilities but, overall, the core duties and responsibilities of the Board were maintained. The data section on pages 17 to 22 of the report illustrated what was going on and through the Covid-19 Task & Finish Subgroup it was possible to respond quickly to the changes in what the data showed was happening.

The work of partner agencies on safeguarding was summarised from page 23 of the report and the Appendix from page 39 of the report set out the actions relating to the HSAB Strategic Plan.

A section on the Safeguarding Adults Review Subgroup started from page 12 of the report. There had been two Safeguarding Adults Reviews undertaken in 2020/21, one of which related to a person with mental health needs while the second was a thematic review on homelessness following the deaths of three homeless people in the borough. There had been a robust response to this with improvements on homelessness from partner agencies including the Council.

For the year ahead there was concern about the long-term impact of Covid on safeguarding, including on people’s mental health and possible increases in the inter-generational incidents of domestic abuse, and so the Board would continue to monitor these issues.

Dr Cooper then responded to questions from the Panel:

• Asked by Cllr Demir about the new Haringey Multi-Agency Solutions Panel referred to on page 13 of the report, Dr Cooper said that the approach was known as creative solutions and that when the Panel comes together it should try to find answers rather than hand problems over to other agencies.
• Asked by Cllr Blake about the increased number of safeguarding concerns received, Dr Cooper said that historically this has been welcome in the sense of increased awareness of safeguarding. However, in the last year there had been a national trend reflecting not just increased awareness but also increasing pressures caused by Covid on safeguarding risks. She was therefore concerned about this being a less than positive trend, though it was too soon to judge that. The national picture suggested cases being reported later and with more complexities as a consequence of Covid.
• Cllr Blake highlighted challenges about what institutions were doing on safeguarding following the concerns about the Metropolitan Police over the Sarah Everard case. Dr Cooper said that the issues for the Police had not had a knock-on effect on partner agencies in terms of safeguarding, though the legislation and guidance for agencies make clear that the right systems and processes must be in place to ensure that staff are appropriately vetted and that issues are properly investigated when they arise. Beverley Tarka, Director for Adults & Health, added that the Council had stringent vetting procedures when recruiting anyone working with children or vulnerable adults. Although the Council had not experienced any issues comparable with that of the Sarah Everard case, it was also not complacent in ensuring that robust procedures were in place. Cllr Blake commented that reflection on corporate culture across all agencies was also required as well as robust procedures. Asked by Cllr Connor about the strategic outcomes for the VAWG work, Dr Cooper said that there was VAWG representation at the Board and that there were strategic links where necessary, but that the outcomes covered in the VAWG annual report were not typically replicated in the HSAB annual report. It was agreed that the most recent VAWG annual report would be circulated to the Panel. (ACTION)
• Helena Kania asked about financial safeguarding in the context of the recent surge in digital scams. Dr Cooper said that this had been covered early on in the task and finish group as it was an issue raised by partners. She acknowledged the surge in scams, including Covid-related scams, and said that awareness of this was variable. There hadn’t been a significant increase in referrals in cases of financial abuse but that didn’t necessarily mean that it wasn’t happening. The banking sector had been much more proactive recently in prompting people to be vigilant about scams which was helpful. Jeni Plummer, AD for Adult Social Services, added that the Council had been doing some safeguarding work on this with the Police, working with communities to improve awareness of how to identify scams. The CCG was working on a digital inclusion project which the Council would be linking into. Connected Communities had also been working with vulnerable people in the community in this area. Helena Kania requested that further information be provided on how this would be monitored. (ACTION)
• Cllr Connor noted that, according to page 20 of the report, abuses in supported living, sheltered or day centre had increased by 15% and asked for clarification on the CQC’s powers to make unannounced visits. Dr Cooper said that some work had been carried out in response to the increase with supported living colleagues to ensure that they were responding appropriately to the issues arising from the lockdown. She had been reassured that the appropriate support and intervention had taken place. Dr Cooper and Charlotte Pomery, AD for Commissioning, confirmed that supported housing is not a regulated service and so unannounced visits to sheltered housing schemes were not carried out. However, there were set processes when dealing with any concerns raised about any care provider and the Council worked its Quality Assurance Team and with the CQC to monitor intelligence on what was happening on the ground.
• Cllr Connor asked for an update on the response to the ‘Living Through Lockdown’ report referred to under P1 on page 43 of the report. Charlotte Pomery said that a meeting of the working group was shortly expected to work through the recommendations. Helena Kania, a member of the Joint Partnership Board, said that she expected further information to be available to the Panel early next year.
• Referring to P6 on page 47 of the report, which covered the safeguarding approach for young people transitioning to adulthood, Cllr Blake asked about the role of the criminal justice system. Dr Cooper commented that the interface between Children’s and Adult services on safeguarding was not an easy one to navigate because the legal policies and the service delivery frameworks were not particularly complementary. This was why this particular piece of work had been undertaken. The focus had largely been on young people with care and support needs, but it was certainly worth raising the challenge of building the criminal justice system into this though there were not easy solutions. A pilot project was ongoing by MOPAC (The Mayor’s Office for Policing And Crime) in Newham on improving the interface between social care safeguarding needs and how the criminal justice system supports young adults. She added that the Met Police, since moving towards a joint unit with Enfield had been less engaged with the HSAB than they had been previously and this has affected ongoing representation and engagement. Previous representatives on the HSAB had made some good interventions around the safeguarding risks for young people in the criminal justice system. Cllr Blake suggested a joint letter between Cllr Connor and Dr Cooper to the Borough Commander asking that this level of engagement with the HSAB be addressed. Cllr das Neves, Cabinet Member for Health, Social Care and Well-being informed the Panel that she had recently raised this matter with the Leader of the Council following a conversation with Dr Cooper. The matter had subsequently been raised with the Borough Commander. Cllr Connor commented that, given that this matter had already been raised with the Borough Commander, she would be happy to raise any other more specific points on behalf of the Panel and suggested that a conversation on this could take place outside of the meeting. (ACTION)
• Cllr Bull asked the Cabinet Member what was being done from a policy perspective to ensure a smooth transition between Children’s services and Adult services. Cllr das Neves responded that she met with Cllr Zena Brabazon, Cabinet Member for Early Years, Children and Families, on a weekly basis to discuss the crossover between their portfolios. She added that the next People Board would shortly be discussing how to improve support for transitions and so it would be possible to update the Panel on that work at a later date. (ACTION)
• Cllr Connor asked about the recent report on the CQC/Ofsted joint inspection which pointed out that there were a few areas that needed extra support. This had included the lack of partnership working and poor communication including co-production with parents, children and young people through the local offer. While acknowledging that the CQC/Ofsted report was published after the period covered by the HSAB annual report, she noted that the concerns about the transition element of this appeared had not been picked up by the HSAB in its report. Dr Cooper responded that she wouldn’t have expected a SEND report to have come before the HSAB. However, she would expect that any recommendations from an inspection that are relevant to people when they turn 18 would be picked up by the P6 workstream discussed earlier in the meeting and through work such as Preparing for Adulthood which was reported to the joint meetings of the Children’s Safeguarding Board and Adult Safeguarding Boards. Cllr Connor commented that she would have greater confidence that deficiencies were being addressed if this was explained in the Board’s annual report. Beverley Tarka noted that the HSAB annual report was looking back over the previous year. She added that there would be a collective response to the CQC/Ofsted report and she would be happy to update the Panel about this at a later date. (ACTION) Charlotte Pomery noted that the fact that the issue was included in the HSAB Strategic Plan demonstrated that this had been identified as an area for priority work.

As a final comment, Dr Adi Cooper, noted that there was still a lot of work to do to respond to changing safeguarding needs following the pandemic. She also commended the recent work on homelessness and safeguarding in Haringey which had been an exemplar in terms of practice in this area.