South Worcestershire review

That Worcestershire Safeguarding Adults Board seeks assurance that clear guidance is provided to staff from all relevant agencies over the need to check previous assessments when conducting a fresh assessment.

That Worcestershire Safeguarding Adults Board seeks assurance that all relevant partner agencies have robust processes for the handover and closure of cases and effective managerial oversight of those processes.

That Worcestershire Safeguarding Adults Board and North and South Worcestershire Community Safety Partnerships request that Public Health establish and co-ordinate a joint task and finish group to make use of the learning from this review to ensure that the safeguarding adults and domestic abuse agendas are more closely aligned and that professional practice in respect of safeguarding adults and tackling domestic abuse is as integrated as possible. Amongst the issues that the task and finish group could consider are:
 ensuring that staff understand that many circumstances are both safeguarding situations and domestic abuse, and that they have a range of social work and legal options with which to work with people
 ensure that organisational policies, protocols and procedures about safeguarding explain the links with domestic abuse and, similarly, policies, protocols and procedures about domestic abuse refer to safeguarding.
 considering integrated training that covers both safeguarding and domestic abuse rather than treating them as separate issues.

That Worcestershire Safeguarding Adults Board and North and South Worcestershire Community Safety Partnerships ensure that the learning from this case is disseminated widely and informs single and multi-agency training and amongst other key issues, highlights the impact of the rule of optimism in this case.

That Worcestershire Safeguarding Adults Board requests local CCG’s and GP Confederations incorporate questions on domestic abuse into the learning disability annual review and seeks assurance that GP surgery staff and partner agencies receive the training and support required to enquire about domestic abuse.

That WSAB seeks assurance from local CCGs and GP Confederations and partner agencies that all patients with a learning disability are identified by their GP in order that they can receive the learning disability annual review to which they are entitled.

That Worcestershire Safeguarding Adults Board obtain assurance that assessments of service users with care and support needs are carried out in as holistic a manner as is practicable and that all agencies providing relevant support to the person being assesses are consulted as part of the assessment.

That North and South Worcestershire Community Safety Partnerships write to the Home Office to ask them to consider how to tailor awareness raising messages about domestic abuse to people with a learning disability. That those Community Safety Partnerships also review their own domestic abuse publications and consider whether “easy read” versions should be made available.

That Worcestershire County Council challenges Lifeways to produce a single agency action plan which substantially addresses their learning from this review and also considers how to obtain assurance that Lifeways and other providers of care and support have the policies and staff training in place to enable them to address domestic abuse effectively.