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This paper aims to explore the links between being lonely and isolated, and increased risks of abuse for adults with care and support needs.

Thematic analysis was used to explore features of loneliness and social isolation present in South Yorkshire Safeguarding Adults Reviews (SARs) published since 2014.

Ten out of fifteen SARs indicated there had been issues of loneliness and/or social isolation for the person who was the subject of the SAR.

The limitations of this paper are that it only included SARs from the South Yorkshire area. Future research should explore national and international perspectives on these issues.

Safeguarding Boards should include actions to address loneliness and social isolation as part of prevention strategies and services to develop approaches that can minimise or prevent abuse before it occurs. Practitioners should routinely explore whether the people they work with feel lonely and/or isolated and support people to take appropriate action to mitigate these risks.

This paper uses the existing body of literature about loneliness and social isolation to explore the risks of abuse and neglect for adults with care and support needs.

The 999 ambulance call handler is critical in responding to emergency patient treatment; however, the call handlers are often a hidden component of the healthcare workforce and an under-researched group. The objective of this study is to understand stress triggers experienced by 999 ambulance call handlers that could lead to burnout and examine personal and organisational mechanisms and strategies which reduced the risk of burnout.

A single interview case study approach applying qualitative methods was undertaken. Participants were identified through a purposive sample of 999 ambulance call handlers with the Yorkshire Ambulance Service National Health Service Trust (UK). Participants were interviewed via telephone between July 2019 and September 2019.

In total, 18 staff participated in this study. Societal factors including public incivility and media representation and organisational factors, such as a demanding environment, lack of appreciation and career progression, training issues and protocols were key stressors. Organisational well-being services were helpful for some, but for others lacked accessibility and appropriateness. Positive public feedback and speaking with peers bolstered well-being. 999 ambulance call handlers suggested that sufficient breaks, co-design or feeding back on training and protocols and creating more informal opportunities to discuss ongoing everyday stressors as methods to reduce stress and burnout.

This paper explores a previously under researched area on stressors and potential burnout in 999 call handlers. This paper highlights the need for improved organisational support services and appropriate public and sector peer recognition of the role of ambulance 999 ambulance call handlers.

Measures introduced to mitigate the spread of coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) may have contributed to an increase in waiting times for face-to-face psychological treatments. As adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) are more likely to encounter barriers when accessing remote therapies, it is important they receive appropriate support while waiting. To understand what care is needed, this service evaluation [aimed to] explored the experiences of service users with ID who have waited for treatment during the pandemic.

Seven individuals who had been waiting for psychological therapy during the COVID-19 pandemic, which included those waiting longer than the national health service target of 18 weeks, were interviewed. Data were analysed using framework analysis.

The following four key themes were identified: waiting has been “painful”, related to how service users continued to experience difficulties whilst they waited; tolerating the wait, highlighted that individuals understood the reasons for waiting; use of coping strategies where service users identified both internal and external strategies they had used to cope; and support and contact from the learning disability team, related to how individuals experienced the support they received from the service.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this service evaluation is the first to explore the experiences of service users with ID waiting for psychological therapy during the Covid-19 pandemic. Results guide suggestions on improving support whilst they are waiting to help prevent further decline.

Secure mental health services in one UK region have acted within a network to develop a range of involvement practices. A new quality benchmarking tool has been created to appraise the implementation of these involvement practices. The purpose of this paper is to report upon a qualitative evaluation of this development.

Staff and service users involved in the co-production of the benchmarking tool were engaged in a series of focus groups and participatory inquiry approaches enacted in the course of scheduled network meetings. Data thus collected was subject to thematic analysis.

Four distinct themes were identified which were titled: Taking time, taking care; The value not the label; An instrument of the network; and All people working together. These are discussed in relation to recent theorising of co-production.

Effectively, this study represents a case study of developments within one region. As such, the findings may have limited transferability to other contexts.

Staff and service users can work together effectively to the benefit of each other and overall forensic services. The benchmarking tool provides a readymade mechanism to appraise quality improvements.

Despite a prevailing culture of competition in wider health-care policy, cooperation leads to enhanced quality.

The benchmarking tool is a unique development of a longstanding involvement network, demonstrating the positive implications for enacting co-production within secure services.

In this article, we offer a contribution to the emerging debate on the role of citizen participation in food system policy making. A key driver is a recognition that solutions to complex challenges in the food system need the active participation of citizens to drive positive change. To achieve this, it is crucial to give citizens the agency in processes of designing policy interventions. This requires authentic and reflective engagement with citizens who are affected by collective decisions. One such participatory approach is citizen assemblies, which have been used to deliberate a number of key issues, including climate change by the UK Parliament's House of Commons. Here, we have undertaken analysis of a citizen food assembly organized in the City of York (United Kingdom). This assembly was a way of hearing about a range of local food initiatives in Yorkshire, whose aim is to both relocalise food supply and production, and tackle food waste. These innovative community-based business models, known as “food hubs”, are increasing the diversity of food supply, particularly in disadvantaged communities. Among other things, the assembly found that the process of design and sortation of the assembly is aided by the involvement of local stakeholders in the planning of the assembly. It also identified the potential for public procurement at the city level, to drive a more sustainable sourcing of food provision in the region. Furthermore, this citizen assembly has resulted in a galvanizing of individual agency with participants proactively seeking opportunities to create prosocial and environmental change in the food system.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in health services adapting the delivery of routine assessments, with many operating remotely. This paper aims to explore the lived experiences of individuals undertaking remote autism assessments during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A mixed-methods service evaluation was completed in an adult autism and neurodevelopmental service based in the north of England. A total of 24 participants, who had undergone remote autism assessments between March 2020 and July 2020, completed a questionnaire about their experiences. Thematic analysis was performed, and additional quantitative data were analysed descriptively to allow contextual information to be included.

The evaluation identified three main themes. The first, practical and sensory issues of remote assessment, indicated that internet connectivity problems were common and sometimes impeded a successful assessment. Additionally, participants identified some elements of the videocall impacted their sensory sensitivities. The second theme, emotional responses to remote assessment, demonstrated relief and exhaustion to be common following sessions. The ability to complete assessments from a safe space were favoured by most. The final theme, pros and cons of different assessment methods, highlighted the preference for video assessments above telephone and in person sessions.

This study provides an original contribution to the literature by gathering autistic adults’ perspectives on remote autism assessments. The findings suggest that video assessments were the most preferable, over face-to-face and then telephone. Services should offer video and face-to-face assessments while keeping telephone assessments to a minimum.

There is little consensus regarding what constitutes an effective therapist when working with adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) who have a mental health problem. This study aims to explore whether clusters of clinical psychologists (CPs) could be differentiated with regards to beliefs as to what defines an effective therapist for adults with ID experiencing psychological distress and seeking treatment.

Four interviews with CPs and an associated thematic analysis created the 49-item Q-set. These items were then sorted into a forced quasi-normal distribution by N = 27 CPs via an online Q-sorting task.

Three participant clusters were identified in the principal components analysis that accounted for 49% of the variance. These clusters were labelled the creative collaborator, the reflective expert and the system integrator.

Differences exist regarding beliefs as to what the psychotherapeutic approaches effective therapists working with ID and comorbid mental health problems should take. These differences approximated to preferred psychological therapy models. This study is critiqued to enable future research on this topic to progress.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore what constitutes an effective psychological therapist for people who have ID.

The purpose of this study was to provide proof of concept and evaluate the project for the development of a forensic service in safeguarding adults at risk of harm who may have suffered a non-accidental injury as a result of physical abuse or neglect.

This pilot project arising from a Safeguarding Adults Review was designed using an iterative process. Opinion from all partners of the Safeguarding Adults’ Boards in two adjacent areas as well as using expert forensic advice from the Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine was sought.

All professionals recognised the need for a forensic service because at present decision-making around potential non-accidental injuries (NAI) may not be evidence based. The main barriers were seen as lack of knowledge and education combined with the area of work not being recognised as being needed and hence not commissioned. No similar service existed in England to aid the project being developed either academically or practically, other than reflecting what happens in children’s safeguarding.

The knowledge and skills as well as the resources developed for this project will aid safeguarding professionals to make more informed decisions when working with adults at risk of harm who have sustained a potential NAI.

This project has high originality with no other area in England offering a similar service or in the process of developing a service at present.