Safeguarding is everyone's responsibility

 

Safeguarding is something that underpins all Social Work practice regardless of what area of Social Work you are in. It is drilled into you throughout your studies and although I don’t work in children’s services, I still know exactly which section of which law it is.

There are a million different ways we safeguard the people we support. It can be higher level at risk of harm or neglect, or it may be that they need money for heating so that they can survive. It could be that their child takes £200 every time they visit and the difficulties in situations like this is that the person may be happy with that and if they have the capacity to decide that then it is not up to up to say otherwise. I have heard a lot of examples of situations where it is financial, but the person is happy with that, I have experienced these types of safeguarding situations myself. I have been fortunate that because I am still new to this I have yet to experience a high-level safeguarding situation which includes physical abuse or something similar, but I am prepared that this is something that I will experience at some point in my career.

It is definitely an important part of Social Work, but I think that when we speak about it in studies, we are generally talking about the people we support. I don’t think there is anything wrong with this at all, I just think that’s the way it is but it is also important that we safeguard ourselves as practitioners. We potentially go into a lot of difficult situations, and we need to think about how we protect ourselves when things get tough or go wrong. Also, we need to think about it before the situation begins, there are certain types of cases or visits where we would choose to go in two’s because we are not sure what we will find when we get there.

It might be that person has previously locked professionals in the house or has been aggressive and they need to look after themselves. This goes back to the importance of information sharing too, if that person has not had previously involvement from Social Services but the district nurse goes in every week for example and knows that they are prone to taking people hostage that is something that should be shared before someone has the opportunity to put themselves at risk. I have asked colleagues to come on visits with me because I needed to do something involving that person’s money or purchasing something for them and I wanted to protect myself from allegations of theft. I have gone on visits with colleagues because they were going to someone’s house who is currently in hospital for the same reason, it covers us if any allegations are made.

I think it is also important to safeguard ourselves emotionally, if something particularly difficult or traumatic has happened in your experience and then a case comes in that mirrors that we need to be able to speak to management and say that case is not appropriate for me, and I don’t feel that I can take it. I think it can be difficult for some people because they do not have the confidence to do this or to share the difficult experience to explain why they would struggle with the new case. The other important thing when thinking about safeguarding is that it shouldn’t just be down to practitioners or medical professionals to report when something is wrong.

Safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility.