Huge 12-month rise in safeguarding concerns over vulnerable adults in West Northamptonshire

Presenting a report by West Northamptonshire Council (WNC), officers laid out the massive increase at a meeting on Monday (June 24), compared to the figure rising by a much more measured nine percent for the national average.

If councils believe a vulnerable adult is experiencing or is at risk of abuse or neglect, they must carry out a Section 42 enquiry to determine whether action should be taken. This could apply to anyone from the elderly to people with physical or mental disabilities or those with severe mental health issues who are unable to take steps to protect themselves.

The amount of Section 42 enquiries also rose by 43 percent in the same 12-month period, roughly six times the rise of the national average.

Neil Cox, assistant director of safeguarding and wellbeing services at WNC, said that work carried out to understand the reasons behind the significant rise indicated that their biggest issue was recording “inappropriate” referrals alongside genuine ones. This means that some of the concerns raised may have been founded, but might not meet the threshold for a safeguarding issue and should have been passed to another department for example.

He said though this might seem like a “trivial issue”, it could create a “spiral of problems” where the system gets overloaded should work not be taken to rectify the recording procedure for safeguarding concerns.

“The positive is, once we really got into the data and understood the effect of those inappropriate referrals, we were able to rule out the possibility that our vulnerable adults were at a higher risk of abuse,” Mr Cox added.

He said that during the last quarter of 2023/24, when a new safeguarding pathway plan had been put in place to tackle inappropriate referrals, the number of safeguarding concerns fell by 39 percent.

The next step for WNC is to reduce the number of referrals that are coming in so that time can be redirected to deal with genuine safeguarding concerns and increase the quality of work that the authority undertakes. This means working with partners to improve the accuracy of their referrals, reviewing communications and keeping safeguarding policies and processes under review to ensure they are effective and efficient.

The meeting also heard that only 56 percent of people felt that outcomes were fully achieved in regards to Section 42 safeguarding enquiries. WNC’s performance in this respect is 21 percent below the England Unitary Average.

WNC suggested that this was because expectations at the start of such enquiries were not being managed properly and that people needed to be made aware that officers have “limited powers” when undertaking such investigations. For example, the authority is not able to mandate that police action is taken.

The authority has said that training will be given to officers to ensure that people better understand what exactly the section 42 process is able to achieve for them.

Realistic achievements would entail lessons being learned from the enquiries into serious abuse or neglect and action being taken to remove future risks and drive best practices.

Read the full report here.