Safeguarding: the changing nature of harm and the role of senior leaders

For Safeguarding Adults Week 2025, Dr Adi Cooper discusses the key issues for senior leaders in adult social care in safeguarding adults. She looks at the importance of ensuring its person-centred, how types of harm are evolving and why despite progress being made in safeguarding knowledge and practice, there’s still more work to undertake. At the end of the blog, there’s an invite for senior leaders to take part in short quiz to reflect on their approaches to safeguarding.

Identifying safeguarding risks 

Safeguarding adults remains a bit of a niche area; it is still not integrated across adult social care in the way in which child protection is within children’s social care. Yet risk is an integral part of life. If you have care and support needs, these will affect the risks you face in daily life. These include risks from people providing care and support to you who may not do their best (there is a continuum between poor care and neglect leading to harm or abuse by omission or intent).

There are risks that the people around you may take advantage of your vulnerabilities and needs, misusing your money or property, psychologically or physically abusing you. Even those unknown to you can cause harm through internet scamming, for example. The spectrum of harm that people can do to each other is constantly changing. One example is exploitation extending to home invasion (cuckooing). We are seeing, identifying and naming these, such as intergenerational domestic abuse. We are also recognising and naming how to change our systems to prevent people falling through the net of safeguarding and protection, which includes a Transitional Safeguarding approach.

There has been great progress in recognising the safeguarding needs of people who experience multiple exclusions and homelessness; something unimaginable ten years ago. However, there remain areas where we appear not to be able to make the necessary changes to prevent abuse from happening again and again, like with organisational abuse. Recurring and shocking exposés show how toxic cultures continue to develop and harm people living in institutions; we still haven’t been able to eliminate this area of abuse.

Ensuring safeguarding is Person-centred

And for every individual the risks they face are personal to them, their relationships, family, friends, circumstances, care and support needs, personal histories and identities, which is why Making Safeguarding Personal remains so important. Each case is different and so the processes, practices and pathways we have for supporting people have to accommodate a broad range of needs and risks.
We have made huge strides and progressed a long way from the adult protection processes of the 2000s which sought to establish whether harm was substantiated or not rather than resolution and recovery for the person involved. Safeguarding knowledge and practice have improved considerably; the Care Act 2014 has helped to clarify and establish who is responsible for what and how. But there is still a long way to go, and we are still at the beginning of the journey.

A safeguarding quiz

For Safeguarding Adults Week, here is a quick quiz for senior leaders, especially for those of you who are Directors of Adult Social Services, given that the Local Authority has a lead role in safeguarding adults (since April 2015 and the implementation of the Care Act 2014).

1. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is not good and 10 is excellent, how effective are your services at safeguarding adults in your area and how do you know?

What we do know from the CQC Assurance visits is that approximately 40% of areas need some improvement in their safeguarding work – and the most common themes emerging are issues with practice and pathways, waiting lists and decision making, capability and confidence of staff in safeguarding practice. But let’s be more positive; 60% are doing well.

2. What keeps you awake at night (apart from balancing the budget and managing relationships with Members)?

If it’s not something to do with safeguarding, I would be surprised. It might be a provider failure that is impacting the quality of a care service or a Safeguarding Adult Review that shows people aren’t working together effectively. You should be aware and make sure your colleagues are taking action, responding and learning from whatever is happening, so they can evidence improvement over time.

3. What are the ten cases that your staff are struggling with?

As an ex-DASS, what I remember are the most complex and challenging situations where someone was experiencing abuse or neglect. Those cases provide human stories that illustrate the personalised complexities of people’s lives. Showing an interest, knowing you care, will reassure your staff that you support them and understand all the transferred pain and shame that safeguarding work inevitably brings with it, which means that most people naturally just want to run away from it or hand it off to someone else to hold and sort out.

4. How are you modelling leadership for safeguarding adults?

You don’t have to be a social worker to care about safeguarding adults (although I would argue, as a social worker, that all social workers should be skilled in safeguarding practice) to demonstrate leadership. How you demonstrate your leadership in your membership of the Safeguarding Adults Board, in attendance at Safeguarding Adults Week events, or in any other activity, shows that you consider this an important element of your responsibilities.

5. Are you/ your staff aware of, and applying ADASS briefings publications and protocols about safeguarding adults?

For example, the Safeguarding Policy Network has recently updated the Out of Area Safeguarding Adults Arrangements Protocol, which helps to tackle and prevent organisational abuse.
ADASS and ADCS have jointly published a briefing on Transitional Safeguarding to support and promote system change in safeguarding young adults?

This quiz has no right or wrong answers. But I would argue that, if safeguarding adults is not on your radar, it should be.

Dr Adi Cooper OBE, Care and Health Improvement Advisor (Safeguarding Adults) at the Local Government Association