Issue - meetings

Annual Report of the Devon Safeguarding Adults Board charting progress within Devon of national expectations and safeguarding activity.

Ms Sian Walker, Independent Chair of the Devon Safeguarding Adults Board to attend the meeting.

[NB: The Safeguarding Board Annual Report will also be available, in due course, at: https://new.devon.gov.uk/devonsafeguardingadultsboard

(Councillors Connett, Dewhirst and Hannaford attended in accordance with Standing Order 25(2) and spoke to this item).

Ms Sian Walker, Independent Chair of the Devon Safeguarding Adults Board, attended and spoke at the invitation of the Cabinet to present the Board’s Annual Report.

The Cabinet received the Annual Report of the Devon Safeguarding Adults Board charting progress within Devon of national expectations and safeguarding activity. This included the 2018/19 key priorities which had shaped practice of ensuring that people in Devon felt safer, protecting people from harm by proactively identifying people at risk, whilst promoting independence and increasing legal literacy of practitioners in respect of the Mental Capacity Act. For the first time, the Annual Report presented some of those personal stories which had been shared with the Board.

It also reported on the work of the DSAB sub groups such as the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) Subgroup, Safeguarding Adults Review Core Group (SARCG), Learning and Improvement (L&I) Subgroup, Operational Delivery Subgroup (Ops Group) and Community Reference Group (CRG) as well as the learning events which had taken place within partner agencies.

The Report concluded with the key achievements that had been made with partner agencies including the Police, HM Prison Exeter, the Council (Adult Social Care), Northern, Eastern and Western (NEW) Devon and South Devon & Torbay Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs), National Probation Service, RD & E Hospital, Devon Partnership Trust (DPT), Public Health Devon, University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust, South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust (TSDFT), Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust, Healthwatch Devon, the Dorset, Devon and Cornwall

Community Rehabilitation Company, NHS and Ambulance etc.

The Report also set out the summaries of Safeguarding Adults Reviews (SARs) which had been completed and approved by the Board in 2018/ 2019. For the SARs published, the full details were available on the DSAB website.

Furthermore, the Report outlined the 2019-20 Strategic Priorities which included finding the right solution at the right time for the most at-risk people, increasing public awareness of Safeguarding, improving the experience of children transitioning (moving) to adult services (working together to ensure they remained safe) and increasing staff understanding of the law in relation to Safeguarding Adults.

It was MOVED by Councillor Leadbetter, SECONDED by Councillor McInnes, and

RESOLVED that the Report be welcomed and Cabinet place on record its thanks to the Chair and those involved in the production of the Report as well as the work of the Board.

[NB: The Safeguarding Board Annual Report will be available, alongside other documentation, such as the Safeguarding Adult Reviews (SAR’s) at:

https://new.devon.gov.uk/devonsafeguardingadultsboard