Information for Professionals

The information in this section is for all staff engaged in safeguarding adults at risk. It gives practical pointers to help people assess the risk of abuse, recognise it when it does occur and respond to it appropriately. It will also help put front line safeguarding in a context of multi-agency, cross-borough work to prevent and investigate abuse across London.

While there are similarities between practice with children and adults at risk, there are significant differences and, to a large extent this is reflected in the definition of adults at risk which contributes to that complexity.

Services have a duty to safeguard all of their service users but provide additional measures for service users who are less able to protect themselves from harm or abuse.

‘Safeguarding adults’ covers a spectrum of activity from prevention through to multi agency responses where harm and abuse occurs.

Safeguarding Resources

The Lewisham Adult Safeguarding Pathway has lots of helpful adult safeguarding resources built into it and gives you a step by step guide.

The Lewisham Safeguarding Adults Board produces leaflets and posters on adult safeguarding which you can download for free.

Think Family

In April 2023, the Lewisham Safeguarding Adults Board (LSAB) and Lewisham Safeguarding Children Partnership (LSCP) jointly agreed to focus on Think Family as a strategic priority. Learning from Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews and Safeguarding Adults Reviews have highlighted the importance of adult and children’s services working collaboratively and taking a joined up, whole family approach.

Skills for Care have collated practical and useful safeguarding resources for the Private Voluntary and Independent Sector. The information available includes recommendations, standards, guides and links to a whole host of related resources.

Jargon Buster

Think Local Act Personal have a useful Jargon Buster that can help professionals from fields other than social work understand the language that is commonly used in care and support work.

Disclosure and Barring Service

The Disclosure and Barring Service have produced guidance on 'Making Recruitment Easier'.

Learning from Safeguarding Adults Reviews for Care Providers

The Institue of Public Care and the Oxford Brookes University has produced a discussion paper on How Can Care Providers Learn From Safeguarding Adult Reviews? which looks at mechanisms to identify and share relevant learning from SARs with care providers.