Western Mail Column: ‘We all have a role to play protecting the vulnerable’

Deputy Minister for Social Services Gwenda Thomas explores how we can all make a difference and overcome the challenge of elderly abuse.

As with anything, the first step towards tackling a problem is to recognise that the problem exists. Like child abuse, or domestic abuse, it is only when we face up to the realities that we can do something about it.

In recent years there has been a growing awareness and better understanding of the abuse of older and vulnerable people, although it should be acknowledged that systematic and structured approaches across Wales to address this are still at a relatively early stage of development when compared to the arrangements that exist for child abuse.

I know that all too often older people and their families may not be fully aware of arrangements that exist to protect vulnerable adults and of the help and support that can be available.
The Welsh Assembly Government is taking steps to address this. Most recently I gave funding to a consortium led by Learning Disability Wales to produce a DVD on the protection of vulnerable adults, which is aimed at adults, including older people, with learning disability themselves.

This will help ensure they have the information they need about their rights, to protect themselves from harm and abuse and to know what to do if abuse happens. The DVD will be published this autumn.

We also need to consider how to make it easier for members of the public to raise specific concerns. These are clearly issues that we need to work with the statutory agencies to address.
Tackling adult abuse is not just a matter for the Welsh Assembly Government, service providers, statutory authorities, regulatory bodies or the police to deal with. All citizens and organisations have a role to play in protecting vulnerable adults from abuse whenever and wherever it occurs.

I know too that the Commissioner for Older People has a particular interest in protecting older people from abuse as she recently addressed an Elder Abuse Seminar organised by Age Concern Cymru. The Welsh Assembly Government’s own focus has to be those areas falling within our devolved powers and responsibilities.

Firstly, we need to ensure that we have the necessary and appropriate national framework in place to strengthen local arrangements, clarify principles of good practice and help the development of approaches to prevent abuse of vulnerable adults, and to identify and deal with abuse when it happens and seek to prevent its re-occurrence.

Secondly, WAG’s Care and Social Services Inspectorate also has an important role in adult protection, including:

• Providing professional advice to support policy developments and encouraging good practice across Wales;
• working with local authorities when the local authority carries out its lead role in this area in relation to individual service users. The inspectorate checks that regulated services overall protect the safety and well-being of service users;
• the inspectorate produces an annual monitoring report on adult protection and will be undertaking an inspection of local authority adult protection arrangements in 2008-09.
  Our main guidance on adult protection is “In Safe Hands”. That statutory guidance identifies councils as having the lead responsibility for developing local adult protection arrangements.

Local authorities need to work closely with a number of other agencies, including commissioners and providers of health and social services; providers of sheltered and supported housing; regulators of services; the police and voluntary and private sector agencies. Every part of Wales has already had local adult protection arrangements in place for a number of years.

We have also actively supported the UK Government in developing and implementing non-devolved measures such as the establishment of the list of people who are unsuitable to work with vulnerable adults and accordingly banned from such work.

However, we will not be complacent in fulfilling our adult protection responsibilities. Earlier this year, I established an Adult Protection Project Board to consider and report on the effectiveness of our adult protection policies to ensure that they are appropriate and robust.

I shall report on the outcome of the work of this group when its tasks have been completed.