How do we support our teams to keep the people we support safe? As part of National Safeguarding Adults Week 2020 Sue Martindale, MacIntyre's Head of Compliance and Safeguarding, shares how we support safeguarding across MacIntyre.
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All safeguarding matters are governed by certain legislation, including The Care Act and The Mental Capacity Act, Social Services and Wellbeing Act (Wales), Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act.
At MacIntyre, we ensure safeguarding is at the heart of everything we do whilst also supporting people to take positive risks of their choice. We do this by having comprehensive, up to date and clear policy and guidance documents and by ensuring that safeguarding, how to raise concerns and the expectations of all staff, is clearly explained through induction, training and probation. This is then reinforced through supervisions, team meetings and annual safeguarding competency reviews in all areas.
Our 'Safeguarding Adults at Risk' policy represents MacIntyre’s statement of purpose (as recommended in the Care Act 2014 Statutory Guidance) relating to promoting wellbeing, preventing harm and responding effectively if concerns are raised. It is consistent with the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 ‘Working Together to Safeguard People’.
What this means is that we ensure all our staff receive training on safeguarding, either face to face, via eLearning or both. This training covers all relevant legislation, including reference to the Mental Capacity Act and the importance of acting in a person centred way in all aspects of safeguarding. This learning is checked every year by managers and formally refreshed at regular intervals.
We also have a safeguarding group which has members from all parts of the organisation and meets four times a year. This group steers the direction of all safeguarding work across the charity, supported by Deborah Kitson, CEO of the Ann Craft Trust, who acts as our critical friend; challenging us to reflect, learn and improve what we do.
The group ensures that our training, practice and policy remains up to date and in line with all relevant legislation.
Following these meetings, we produce a newsletter titled 'The Safeguardian', which features some of the topics covered. This is sent out to all areas of MacIntyre and shares safeguarding updates, statistical trends in the organisation and best practice examples, as well as organisational learning.
Sue Martindale
Head of Compliance and Safeguarding
