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We hold these truths to be self-evident
Guidance issued during 2017 by the Department of Health on the implementation of the Care Act 2014 clearly identifies the protection of people from abuse and neglect as a means of promoting their wellbeing as a duty incumbent upon all local authorities (Department of Health, 2017: paragraphs 1.5 and 4.102), and further instructs them to promote quality services through their contracting functions (2017: paragraph 4.0). In so doing, the Department of Health is reaffirming the long standing guidance contained within “No Secrets: Guidance on developing and implementing multi-agency policies and procedures to protect vulnerable adults from abuse” (Department of Health, 2000) and reiterating one of the fundamental purposes of the commissioning and contracting activities of local authorities brought into being 28 years ago by the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990.
Yet following the publication of the most recent figures from NHS Digital in November 2017 to add to those of five previous annual periods from the NHS Information Centre (2013), The Health and Social Care Information Centre (2014a, b, 2015) and NHS Digital (2016), it is evident that abuse continues to be perpetrated in people’s own homes, in care homes and in hospitals. Notably, the figures confirm that levels of abuse have remained very constant, particularly that occurring in care and nursing homes from where 36 per cent of all safeguarding enquiries have arisen during everyone of the six periods from which data were secured. Though the information that is now collated by NHS Digital (NHS Digital is also known as the Health and Social Care Information Centre) continue to be produced as experimental statistics, it is the best numerical information that is available to the health and social care economy and further reveals that as a result of all safeguarding enquiries conducted, between 41 and 75 per cent[1] of the allegations of abuse are found to be substantiated or partially substantiated in each of the periods reported on, confirming that abuse in some form has definitely been perpetrated.
The veracity of the numbers
These lamentable figures should prompt even the casual observer to ask what is going wrong when it comes to providing for the potentially vulnerable people in our society who are in...