Editorial

Citation

Penhale, B. and Flynn, M. (2015), "Editorial", The Journal of Adult Protection, Vol. 17 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/JAP-02-2015-0003

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: The Journal of Adult Protection, Volume 17, Issue 2

As the New Year crashed in, and Safeguarding Adults Boards in England were trying to make sense of the Care and Support Statutory Guidance Issued under the Care Act 2014[1], prior to implementation of the Care Act from April, adult safeguarding seems to have to address more unusual, cruel and violent matters than those that were anticipated by No Secrets (please note – unless you are dealing with historical cases of abuse in England, copies should be re-cycled). Most of us walk backwards into the future – drawing on memory and experience we see what was and anticipate more of the same. But things are not the same – thanks to the Conservative led coalition, adult social care has been decimated and the NHS is compelled to engage in the commercialisation of its services. The avalanche of privatisation carries its own momentum. There are likely to be some constants during 2015 and our best guesses include:

• Corporate dystopia: Circle can stroll away from Hinchingbroke Hospital[2] because its franchise is “no longer viable under current terms”. Such a bummer when the Care Quality Commission requires it to spend more in order to make less.

• Grooming: over many months, 14-year old Breck Bednar was befriended online by 18-year old Lewis Daynes. Their single meeting resulted in Breck Bednar having his throat slashed in a sadistic, sexual attack[3]. In addition to cyber grooming, a judge is facing criticism having suggested that a teacher was “groomed” by a 15-year old pupil[4]. Former teacher Stuart Kerner received an 18 month suspended sentence for being groomed by a female pupil at his school.

• Distortions of accountability: which professional, professional body or agency is responsible when a tenant with a learning disability dies from a preventable condition or when an elderly person dies from penetrating and infected pressure ulcers, for example – and will the anticipated thousands of safeguarding adult reviews arising from the lowered threshold yield solutions?

• Violence arising from excessive appetites: it was Jonathan Shepherd, a surgeon and Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at Cardiff University who led the development of community safety partnerships. Professor Shepherd's experience of treating A&E patients with facial injuries 20 years ago led to an invitation to the police and local authorities to pool information on weapons, times and Cardiff's violent hot-spots. By 2007, violent incidents in Cardiff had fallen by 40 per cent – confirming that worthwhile outcomes require the engagement of involved people and may take years to be realised.

• Barbarous punishments, some imposed by courts: public beheadings and public floggings. Raif Badawi has been spared the 50 lashes he was due to receive during the week commencing 12 January 2015 because his back was insufficiently healed after his initial 50 lashes of the previous week. Saudi Arabia appears unmoved by global outrage. One thousand lashes for creating a web site devoted to freedom of speech[5].

• Terror attacks targeting the rule of law, freedoms and tolerance: Paris’ trauma remains fresh and has triggered demonstrations of unity and belonging as well as questions about what it means to identify with a country, a continent and an ideology.

• Fear and anxiety: about personal safety, falling living standards, debts, job security, globalisation – and the simplistic explanations of politicians.

• Silent suffering: Tim Salter's suicide[6] in September 2013 is attributed to generic austerity policies and his benefit cuts. He was partially sighted, and agoraphobic with mental health problems. He had neither food nor money and was about to be evicted for rent arrears from his housing association flat.

• Language contortions: the Accident and Emergency crisis is not a crisis. According to David Cameron it is a “short term pressure issue”[7]. Further, “Bedblockers” are older people who are well enough to go home but are trapped in hospital waiting for social care support. Unless the destructive dismembering of the NHS is halted there may be a lot of embarrassing “sub-optimum clinical outcomes” to explain away.

In this issue of the journal there are six papers covering different aspects of the safeguarding terrain. Suzy Braye and colleagues provide the second part of their exploration of self-neglect (soon to be “fully” included within safeguarding under the Care Act implementation), whilst Bates and colleagues examine the somewhat contentious area of social networking and the complex issues arising from online interactions between social care staff and service users. This is followed by thought-provoking paper concerning elders’ perspectives on elder abuse in an Ethiopian context, provided by Chane and Adamek. The following contribution, from Marsland and colleagues concerns some careful work undertaken relating to the development of a set of early indicators of concern about abuse and neglect of older people in care and nursing home settings. The paper by Gil and colleagues from Portugal also relates to elder abuse and considers whether the development and use of more qualitative research approaches could be beneficial in relation to research on the prevalence of elder abuse (as much of this type of study is linked to quantitative survey-based measurements). Our final paper of the issue is provided by Giordano and Neville and concerns the development of a collaborative approach to adult protection in one local authority in Wales, specifically in relation to the creation and funding of a co-ordinator post within the authority. The issues relating to this and the mechanisms that contributed to successful implementation are discussed in the paper.

We hope that you will find this issue of the journal both interesting and thought-provoking and that those of you working in an English context will meet the requirements of the Care Act implementation process without these being too problematic or burdensome for you. For those of us who are not in a local authority context we will watch developments with interest and hope that some of you might wish to chart the changes that are occurring with submissions to the journal!

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/315993/Care-Act-Guidance.pdf (accessed 17 January 2015).

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-30740956 (accessed 17 January 2015).

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-30193056 (accessed 17 January 2015).

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30835245 (accessed 18 January 2015).

www.amnesty.org/en/news/postponement-raif-badawi-flogging-medical-grounds-exposes-shocking-brutality-punishment-2015-01 (accessed 17 January 2015).

www.stourbridgenews.co.uk/news/10892787.Disabled_Kinver_man_killed_himself_after_being_left__almost_destitute__when_his_state_benefits_were_axed/ (accessed 17 January 2015).

www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jan/06/hospitals-struggling-demand-cancel-operations-major-incidents (accessed 17 January 2015).

Margaret Flynn and Bridget Penhale