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The purpose of this paper is to critically review the context of adult protection in Ireland with a focus on older people. The paper traces advances and current limitations in policy, regulation, practice and legislation.

A review of historical and current contexts in adult safeguarding in Ireland is presented with consideration of key public reviews and commentaries related to care provision, governance and the legislative status of adults at risk.

While Ireland’s journey to provide adult safeguarding responses for older people has progressed since 2002, there remain many gaps. Further work needs to be addressed urgently to enable a comprehensive alignment of fit-for-purpose, responsive legislation, practice and policy to meet the complex and diverse needs of an increasing ageing population who may require safeguarding support. This includes fostering robust inter-sectorial collaboration, safeguarding legislation and cultural change related to human rights approaches.

The paper is a discussion on the context of adults safeguarding in relation to practice, policy and legislation.

Identifies the need for significant reform in the Irish system of health service. Argues for an overarching, inter-sectorial approach to addressing adult safeguarding, which focuses on prevention as well as early intervention.

The paper offers a review of the current diverse elements comprising current adult safeguarding and older people in Ireland and integrates legislative, regulatory, policy and practice realities. Challenges are illustrated within the context of reactive rather than proactive safeguarding agendas which are linked to public scandals and debates. The paper argues for a more integrated and robust inter-sectorial approach to safeguarding underpinned by adult safeguarding legislation and an overarching governance structure.

The purpose of this paper is to present findings from a mixed-methods study on the impact that COVID-19 has had on adult safeguarding. The research sought to explore the challenges and opportunities presented by COVID-19 to both frontline and non-frontline professionals working in adult safeguarding.

A mixed-methods project was undertaken comprising a literature review, survey, semi-structured interviews and a small number of freedom of information requests. This paper presents the findings predominantly from the survey and interviews.

Unsurprisingly, COVID-19 has presented a variety of challenges for professionals working in adult safeguarding. The themes that occurred most often were the day-to-day changes and challenges, relationships across sectors, information and navigating the ethical questions in safeguarding.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the findings represent the first focused qualitative mixed-method study aimed at understanding more about the impact the pandemic has had on adult safeguarding through the eyes of those professionals working in that field.

Local Safeguarding Adults Board (SAB) policies, procedures, guidance and related documents on self-neglect were gathered and analysed, to map what approaches are being taken across England. This paper aims to identify areas of divergence to highlight innovations or challenges faced by SABs.

Self-neglect documents were identified by searching SAB websites. Data were extracted into a framework enabling synthesis and comparison between documents.

This paper reports on how English SAB documentation defines self-neglect, treats executive capacity, lays out pathways for self-neglect cases, advises on refusal of service input and multi-agency coordination and draws on theories or tools. Greater coherence in understanding self-neglect has developed since it was brought within safeguarding in 2014; however, variation remains regarding scope, referral pathways and threshold criteria.

This review was limited to published SAB documentation at one point in time and could not consider either the wider context of safeguarding guidance and training or implementation in practice.

This review provides an overview of how SABs are interpreting national guidance and guiding practitioners. The trends and areas of uncertainty identified offer a resource for informed research and policy-making.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first systematic survey of SAB self-neglect policies, procedures and guidance since self-neglect was included under safeguarding.

This paper aims to explore the content of Safeguarding Adult Reviews (SARs) from older adult care homes to understand how safety is understood and might be measured in practice.

SARs relevant to older adult care homes from 2015 onwards were identified via the Social Care Institute of Excellence SARs library. Using thematic analysis, initial inductive coding was mapped to a health-derived safety framework, the Safety Measurement and Monitoring Framework (SMMF).

The content of the SARs reflected the dimensions of the SMMF but gaining a deeper understanding of safety in older adult care homes requires additional understanding of how this unique context interacts with these dimensions to create and prevent risks and harms. This review identified the importance of external factors in care home safety.

This study provides an insight into the scope of safety issues within care homes using the SARs content, and in doing so improves understanding of how it might be measured. The measurement of safety in care homes needs to acknowledge that there are factors external to care homes that a home may have little knowledge of and no ability to control.