Adult Safeguarding
Discover the charity making a difference to adult safeguarding We speak to Deborah Kitson from the Ann Craft Trust; a national charity specialising in adult safeguarding. Last November, the charity launched its inaugural National Safeguarding Adults Week, an awareness campaign designed to raise awareness of the different ways in which we can fully protect adults at risk. Deborah tells us more of the plans for this year’s week, as well as explaining how they work closely with social work teams to support safeguarding activities.
Can you tell us more about who the Ann Craft Trust is?
additional courses on specific and topical issues such as online safety, cyberbullying and radicalisation.
The Ann Craft Trust (ACT) was established in 1992 (previously NAPSAC) and is a national registered charity. It is committed to safeguarding young people and adults at risk of abuse.
We were delighted when the Safeguarding Adult Board Network approached us and asked us to work in partnership with them on National Safeguarding Adults week this year.
ACT responds to the needs and concerns of people working across and being supported by social care, health, education, and criminal justice by providing information and advice, peer support and networks. We also have a variety of publications including a quarterly bulletin, bibliographies, and books as well as training, seminars and conferences and research and awareness campaigns.
ACT also responds to emails and phone calls requesting advice and guidance as required.
You’ve created a series of toolkits for practitioners to educate them on topical issues such as Domestic Abuse, Learning Disabilities, and How does the Trust work with Forced Marriage. Why is it so social services teams to increase important that social workers safeguarding knowledge and continue to update their improve practice? knowledge of these areas? ACT sits in the Centre for Social Work in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham and contributes to the teaching of social work students. The ACT offers a wide range of training and consultancy to the statutory, voluntary and independent sectors including local authorities, child and adult safeguarding boards and social care teams. Our range of training for them includes Safeguarding Awareness, Safeguarding for Managers, Mental Capacity Act, and DoLS, as well as
As exemplified by the Care Act 2014, it is important to address the diverse range of themes that come under the remit of safeguarding. ACT’s work looking at forced marriage and learning disabilities (the most recent being My Marriage, My Choice funded by the Forced Marriage Unit) aimed to raise the issue within the statutory and voluntary sector. Our work across safeguarding Boards previously had evidenced that this was not an issue that they were addressing or had considered. Statistics of people with learning disabilities and forced marriage have increased over
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the last five years and hopefully, due to the work of ACT and the University of Nottingham, this is now an area of work that is being addressed. Domestic abuse is another issue that we are currently funded to look at and again we have been raising the issues relating to domestic abuse and young people with learning disabilities and the dearth of resources available to them. So, this work and our toolkits and research reports raise the issue and to some extent also offer the opportunity to campaign on behalf of these groups.
How can social workers gain access these toolkits and what kind of things can they expect to find in them? ACT’s research reports and publications are all available and information about them and how to access them is on our website at anncrafttrust.org. They offer research findings and recommendations for best practice.
You’re doing a lot of work to safeguard adults within the sports sector and this has been funded by Sport England. Why is this such a growing area for concern and what should social workers be doing to protect the vulnerable adults they support?