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The purpose of this paper is to report the findings from a study exploring the understanding of vulnerability and adult safeguarding within Christian faith-based settings. The paper concludes with recommendations for practitioners involved in safeguarding adults in faith-based Christian settings.

The paper considers a survey (n=3,182) into understanding of vulnerability and adult safeguarding for individuals who attend Church regularly or work in a Christian organisation

This study is the first to be undertaken with a UK sample and highlights a range of factors informing adult safeguarding practice within Christian organisations. This includes: complexity linked to understanding vulnerability and its role in safeguarding activity; lack of clarity about what to do with a safeguarding adult concern; and the need for safeguarding training pertinent to the particular needs of faith-based settings.

As there is currently a dearth of research in this area this paper makes a valuable contribution to the developing knowledge base around safeguarding and vulnerability within faith-based organisations.

Professionals need to develop increased understanding of the complexities involved in safeguarding activity, and specifically how those working in the wider context of supporting vulnerable adults make sense of safeguarding processes and procedures.

It is important that all organisations, including faith-based settings, working with adults have an understanding of their roles and responsibilities with respect to safeguarding those at risk of harm.

This paper is the first UK study to consider safeguarding adults at risk of harm in Christian faith contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to report the key findings from a study of adult protection referrals collected by two English local authorities during 1998‐2005.

Referrals were analysed for patterns relating to risk with client level data supplemented by information from the local authority databases and from the Care Quality Commission. The analysis also examined associations between adult protection processes and outcomes and looked at how adult protection monitoring data could be improved to better inform safeguarding management and practice at local and national level.

Sexual abuse was most frequently reported for people with intellectual disabilities, who were also at higher risk of abuse when living out of area. Older people were most at risk of financial abuse in community settings and of neglect in residential care.

The study identifies patterns of risk in the abuse of older people and those with intellectual disabilities and informs preventive interventions. It also indicates priorities for improving the quality and comparability of adult protection monitoring data.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of the assumption of altruism argued by the author to be a tendency among both the lay public, professionals and politicians, a generalised assumption that contributes to the long standing and obstinate presence of abuse of adults who are at risk throughout England, particularly older people living in care and nursing homes.

By examining available figures that depict the continuing abuse of vulnerable adults, and by drawing on research, the author offers a partial explanation for the longevity of abuse in English society.

The paper demonstrates how the concept of the assumption of altruism can explain to a degree the apparent enduring levels of abuse of adults who are at risk.

The paper offers the opportunity for the reader to consider some of the fundamental, higher order reasons for the persistent levels of abuse in England, abuse that endures despite the oversight by government of care provided to adults who maybe at risk by virtue of the activities of the statutory regulator and health and social care commissioners.

By presenting the incontrovertible evidence of enduring abuse, the paper introduces the concept of the assumption of altruism as a partial explanation for its continuing occurrence despite decades of policy and practice guidance designed to overcome it.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the human work entailed in the deployment of digital health care technology. It draws on imagined configurations of computers and machines in fiction and social science to think about the relationship between technology and people, and why this makes implementation of digital technology so difficult. The term hubots is employed as a metaphorical device to examine how machines and humans come together to do the work of healthcare.

This paper uses the fictional depiction of hubots to reconceptualise the deployment of a particular technology – a computer decision support system (CDSS) used in emergency and urgent care services. Data from two ethnographic studies are reanalysed to explore the deployment of digital technologies in health services. These studies used comparative mixed-methods case study approaches to examine the use of the CDSS in eight different English NHS settings. The data include approximately 900 hours of observation, with 64 semi-structured interviews, 47 focus groups, and surveys of some 700 staff in call centres and urgent care centres. The paper reanalyses these data, deductively, using the metaphor of the hubot as an analytical device.

This paper focuses on the interconnected but paradoxical features of both the fictional hubots and the CDSS. Health care call handling using a CDSS has created a new occupation, and enabled the substitution of some clinical labour. However, at the same time, the introduction of the technology has created additional work. There are more tasks, both physical and emotional, and more training activity is required. Thus, the labour has been intensified.

This paper implies that if we want to realise the promise of digital health care technologies, we need to understand that these technologies substitute for and intensify labour.

This is a novel analysis using a metaphor drawn from fiction. This allows the authors to recognise the human effort required to implement digital technologies.

The purpose of this paper is to review the reasons underlying the slow rate of progress towards developing a comprehensive policy underpinning for adult safeguarding in England and proposes long-term solutions.

This paper uses a model of policy change to argue that adult safeguarding has been over-reliant on case histories to define its policy problems and influence its politics, while making insufficient progress on data collection and analysis. It uses examples from the parallel discipline of public health to explore four challenges, or “problems”, relevant to the further development of the knowledge base underpinning adult safeguarding policy.

Four recommendations emerge for closing the adult safeguarding “knowledge gap”, including the development of a national research strategy for adult safeguarding. In a fifth recommendation the paper also proposes a clearer recognition of the contribution that local public health professionals can make to local adult safeguarding policy making and programme development.

The first four recommendations of this paper would serve as the basis for developing a national research strategy for adult safeguarding. The fifth would strengthen the contribution of local public health departments to safeguarding adults boards.

The author is unaware of the existence of any other review of the limitations of the adult safeguarding knowledge base as a foundation for policy making, or which proposes strategic solutions. The work is valuable for its practical proposals.

The purpose of this paper is to update the core data set of self-neglect safeguarding adult reviews (SARs) and accompanying thematic analysis, and to address the challenge of change, exploring the necessary components beyond an action plan to ensure that findings and recommendations are embedded in policy and practice.

Further published reviews are added to the core data set from the websites of Safeguarding Adults Boards (SABs). Thematic analysis is updated using the four domains employed previously. The repetitive nature of the findings prompts questions about how to embed policy and practice change, to ensure impactful use of learning from SARs. A framework for taking forward an action plan derived from an SAR findings and recommendations is presented.

Familiar, even repetitive findings emerge once again from the thematic analysis. This level of analysis enables an understanding of both local geography and the national legal, policy and financial climate within which it sits. Such learning is valuable in itself, contributing to the evidence base of what good practice with adults who self-neglect looks like. However, to avoid the accusation that lessons are not learned, something more than a straightforward action plan to implement the recommendations is necessary. A framework is conceptualised for a strategic and longer-term approach to embedding policy and practice change.

There is still no national database of reviews commissioned by SABs so the data set reported here might be incomplete. The Care Act 2014 does not require publication of reports but only a summary of findings and recommendations in SAB annual reports. This makes learning for service improvement challenging. Reading the reviews reported here enables conclusions to be reached about issues to address locally and nationally to transform adult safeguarding policy and practice.

Answering the question “how to create sustainable change” is a significant challenge for SARs. A framework is presented here, drawn from research on change management and learning from the review process itself. The critique of serious case reviews challenges those now engaged in SARs to reflect on how transformational change can be achieved to improve the quality of adult safeguarding policy and practice.

The paper extends the thematic analysis of available reviews that focus on work with adults who self-neglect, further building on the evidence base for practice. The paper also contributes new perspectives to the process of following up SARs by using the findings and recommendations systematically within a framework designed to embed change in policy and practice.

Criticisms of the effectiveness of Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) led to legislative reform in the shape of the Children and Social Work Act 2017. Given parallels between the mandates for LSCBs and Safeguarding Adults Boards (SABs), the onus is on SABs to demonstrate their effectiveness. The purpose of this paper is to explore how SABs might more effectively demonstrate their impact across the range of their mandated responsibilities.

The paper draws on definitions of impact from social work education, healthcare and from university research, exploring their relevance for capturing different types of data regarding the outcomes and impact of SAB activity. The paper also draws on frameworks for the process of capturing data and for implementing strategies designed to change practice and develop adult safeguarding services.

The paper argues that SABs have struggled to identify their impact and need to consider what types of impact they are seeking to demonstrate before choosing methods of seeking to capture that information. The paper also argues that SABs may have given insufficient thought to the process of change management, to the components needed to ensure that desired outcomes are embedded in procedural and practice change.

This paper explores the challenges for SABs of identifying their impact and offers some theoretical frameworks that have defined different types of impact. The paper also draws on frameworks that identify the different components that are necessary for achieving change. This paper offers a contribution to theory building and is a response to the challenge of demonstrating the value that SABs add to adult safeguarding policy and practice.

A case study reviews the findings of the longitudinal service development and practice change initiative to embed making safeguarding personal in adult safeguarding. The findings of that initiative are mapped against the frameworks for identifying impact. Experience of implementing the initiative is mapped against the frameworks for effective implementation of change.

The paper presents frameworks for identifying the different types of outcomes and impact that SABs may achieve through their strategic business plans and for ensuring that the different components are present for the successful implementation and maintenance of change. The paper argues that the legal, policy and financial context within which SABs are located presents challenges as well as opportunities with respect to achieving and demonstrating impactful change. However, it also suggests that a more informed understanding of different types of impact may generate different approaches to data collection in order to capture what has been achieved.

This paper seeks to review literature on environmental safeguards for five selected multilateral financial institutions (MFIs) with the objective of verifying whether their environmental safeguards have been updated with climate change elements, and whether they have adopted specific climate change strategies for their investment portfolios.

The methodology set for this review was based on a set of descriptive criteria. These included content reviews on MFIs existing safeguards or formal environmental guidelines, the extent of incorporation of climate change to guidelines text, and overarching strategies adopted to address climate change.

Generally, the environmental safeguards reviewed have minimally discussed formal considerations of climate change issues. Although environmental safeguards continue to play vital roles in bank operations, it generally remains traditional with minimal adjustments to formally include climate change. Nevertheless, all the banks have developed overarching climate change strategies at the strategic level.

The information presented herein is compiled from articles, reports, papers and books identified from computer‐based searches. The research is limited to information available on the internet, books and papers. It is therefore possible that MFIs are involved in some climate change activities not yet in the public domain, and as such are not covered by this paper.

Quite clearly, the adjustment of environmental assessments such as environmental impacts assessment/strategic environmental assessment to include climate change is in the offing. This means that practitioners may need to considerably understand the character of climate change and thereby construct concrete approaches to tackle both ideological and methodological gaps.

This paper fulfils an identified need in the climate change discourse, bringing forward climate change as an issue deserving more legal, formal and obligatory attention.

The purpose of this paper is to outline and critique the current model of adult safeguarding in Northern Ireland (NI).

The paper offers a critical analysis of adult safeguarding, legislation, policy and practice. Insights are offered from the Regional Adult Safeguarding Officer for NI, and available research evidence is cited.

Distinct features of Northern Irish society have shaped its adult safeguarding policy and practice in ways which differ from those in England, Scotland and Wales. The strengths and limitations of the legal and policy framework, and practice systems are discussed.

The paper offers the viewpoint of the authors, which may not be representative.

The potential advantages and challenges of the Northern Irish safeguarding systems are presented, and potential future developments are highlighted.

Changes have been highlighted in the way adult safeguarding has been conceptualised. An emphasis on prevention and early intervention activities, with a key role envisaged for community, voluntary and faith sector organisations, have been noted.

This paper provides an accessible overview of adult safeguarding in NI, which to date has been lacking from the literature.

The safeguarding and protection components of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 offers the culmination of four years consultation in England and Wales by the Law Commission and many years of evolving policy and practice with a view to protecting adults from harm. The purpose of this paper is to offer both scrutiny and challenge for Wales’ policy makers and practitioners alike.

The paper is a critical analysis of both current responses and forthcoming changes.

The paper proposes that Wales has failed to implement previous recommendations in relation to institutional abuse. Currently in Wales, there are individuals employed in safeguarding lead roles who have no social care qualification. This apparent “loophole” has not to date been highlighted to date by either of the regulatory bodies within Wales (CSSIW/CCfW).

The paper offers a viewpoint but leaves some questions unanswered.

The Williams Review in April 2014 is set to change the local authority landscape in Wales. There is scope for developing the function of adult safeguarding.

Wales’ failure to recognize institutionalized abuse as a distinct category may have had impacted on its ability to respond to abuse in nursing and care as well hospital settings.

The failure to recognize institutional abuse is not the only safeguarding anomaly within Wales’ arrangements for protecting those are risk of abuse. This paper describes gaps in the NHS and of professional accountability.