Issue - meetings

The Cabinet Member for Health and Social Care Integration introduced a report on the Annual Report 2017/18 for the Safeguarding Adults Board.

The Annual Report described the work and priorities of the Barking and Dagenham Safeguarding Adults Board (SAB) from April 2017 to March 2018 and set out how the Board had worked to improve the protection of vulnerable adults across Barking and Dagenham along with its achievements in 2017/18 and key priorities into the future.

The annual reports contained contributions from a range of organisations who were involved in safeguarding vulnerable adults in Barking and Dagenham. Joint working has been effective over the past year, and the membership of the Board has strengthened.  During the year, the Board had appointed a new Independent Chair.  The statutory partners provided financial resources to support the SAB a to fulfil their functions and to support the undertaking of Safeguarding Adult Reviews (SARs).

The Annual Report had been agreed by the Safeguarding Adults Board at its meeting on 17 July 2018 and was presented and discussed at the Health & Wellbeing Board on 5 September 2018.  The Health & Wellbeing Board noted the need to improve awareness across frontline teams and the wider community about safeguarding concerns, especially around issues of exploitation and modern slavery, and on how to report concerns for attention by statutory agencies. 

The Cabinet Member for Health and Social Integration considered that one of the Safeguarding partners, the East Basic Command Unit (BCU) needed to improve its transparency and she would be inviting the Borough Police Commander to address a future meeting of the Assembly for an update on crime and violence safeguarding issues.

In answer to a question, the Cabinet Member advised that records of care are kept including those of inspections and quality assurance.

Members welcomed the report and in particular agreed that it was a priority to help and support vulnerable adults. They were concerned to ensure that partnerships and agencies continued to work together in light of 1,632 safeguarding concerns that had been raised to the Council which was an increase on the previous year.  They also noted that work on awareness of mental health was on-going and the Serious Case Review contained in the report. They were also concerned about the adult social care budgets and the effect of the introduction of Universal Credit (UC), which is was felt had put vulnerable residents at risk and raised the level of homelessness.

(i)  The Assembly resolved to note the contents of Annual Report of the Safeguarding Adults Board for 2017/18; and

(ii)  Noted the discussion at the Health & Wellbeing Board and add further comments to shape the priorities of the SAB through its Strategic Plan.