Creating a lifeline

At the back end of 2013, a group of housing associations in the north west gathered together to talk about how best to protect vulnerable people living in their homes.

The 18 landlords in the gang were driven by a number of motivations. For starters, they were meeting against the background of an increasing national focus on safeguarding – caused by a number of high-profile serious case reviews. Then there was the forthcoming Care Act (which became law in April this year), which had a large focus on safeguarding. The group hunkered down to form their protection strategy in the Birkenhead main office of one of its members, Magenta Living.

It’s difficult to imagine a more important function for social landlords to get right than protecting vulnerable children and adults – who may be so because of age, or disability, domestic abuse, crime or anti-social behaviour. The landlords who formed the fledgling group have since shared many tips and ideas to drive forward performance in this area. But their benchmarking work also revealed significant performance differences when it comes to their safeguarding efforts.

Put simply, some landlords were spending more time on safeguarding than others – and some had a better hit rate than their counterparts when reporting concerns about tenants to councils’ social services departments.

Now, for the first time, Inside Housing can share some of this performance data more widely.

Safeguarding alerts

One of the areas the group looked at was adult safeguarding and the number of occasions that they refer concerns to social services departments which are accepted and acted upon. It is this latter point that raises some interesting questions because of the variation in the landlords’ hit rate.

One anonymous organisation, for example, referred 91 adult safeguarding alerts (the most made by any of the landlords in the group which reported figures). Of these, a relatively impressive 79 – or 87% – were accepted and picked up by the social services departments. But others had a much smaller rate of success. One housing provider made 13 referrals, of which just three – or 23% – were accepted. Another made 11 referrals, of which two were accepted, a hit rate of just 18%.

As Jane Sharpe, head of compliance - diversity and safeguarding at Magenta Living, puts it, when a council accepts a referral it is, in effect, saying ‘we agree that there might be something happening’. Clearly, however, some landlords who took part in the survey were meeting with more agreement than others.

One possible reason for variations in performance may be explained by the extent to which landlords and social services departments typically interact and understand each other’s priorities.

The north west forum’s benchmarking survey raises some interesting questions about this too. Just five of the 16 landlords who responded said they were represented on their local adult safeguarding board. And just one of these social landlords had staff members dedicated to safeguarding – the rest had staff who combined safeguarding responsibilities with other work.

The amount of time spent on safeguarding each week also varied significantly. One 13,000-home organisation estimated it spends 70 hours on safeguarding work each week (the highest of those surveyed).

A similar-sized 13,700-home landlordestimated it spends 20 hours on safeguarding each week. There was significant variation recorded by every landlord on this question.

Five of the landlords in the north west safeguarding forum were also able to supply data about the percentage of stock in which safeguarding concerns had been raised. This ranged from one organisation which had raised safeguarding concerns in 5% of its stock, down to 0.2%.

Ms Sharpe says that the variations in performance reveal that the landlords are ‘all at different stages of the journey’.

‘There is no set way [to get it right],’ she adds.

Issue of inconsistency

While performance data is useful, all providers should be most concerned about the outcome for the adults and children they flag up as being at risk, says Imogen Parry, an independent safeguarding adults consultant. Ms Parry suggests that most providers have concerns about inconsistent responses to safeguarding concerns that they raise, ‘especially if they have stock across lots of local authorities that use different practices’.

‘Even in a local authority, the response can differ depending on who you speak to on the day,’ she adds. ‘What would be interesting is the group moving on to look at outcomes.’

Ms Parry stresses that close working between all partners involved in protecting vulnerable people is vital, so that all parties have an understanding of the roles they can play and share information.

‘There has to be education on both sides,’ she suggests. ‘We need to sit round a table together at senior levels and at front line level.’

“The response can differ depending on who you speak to on the day.”

There has, of course, been a major change in the field of safeguarding this year – thanks to the Care Act, which came into force in April.

When it comes to protecting vulnerable adults, local areas are now required to have set up Safeguarding Adults Boards (SABs). The boards must carry out Safeguarding Adults Reviews (SARs) when an adult dies as a result of abuse or neglect and there is concern that partner agencies could have worked more effectively to protect them. SARs must also be carried out if it is thought an adult has experienced serious abuse or neglect.

The membership of a Safeguarding Adults Board includes representatives from the local authority, the chief of police and representatives from the local clinical commissioning group (CCG).

While there is no requirement for social landlords to have a place on the boards, government guidance suggests that representatives of housing providers may be included ‘as the establishing local authority considers appropriate’.

Initial research carried out by Ms Sharpe suggests that at least a quarter of the new boards have some housing representation – although this is an early indication and not based on a full survey of all SABs, she stresses.

Sarah Davis, senior policy and practice officer at the Chartered Institute of Housing, says that housing providers should think about how best to approach their local boards if they are not already engaged. One problem flagged by Ms Parry is that if numerous landlords operate in an area, boards can find it confusing to work out who it is most appropriate to engage with.

Ms Davis agrees. ‘I think if the Safeguarding Adult Board was bombarded with all of the partners it would be confusing,’ she states. Instead, providers should talk to each other and look at how they could work together as a group to engage with the boards.

‘Make yourself easy to know and navigate,’ she suggests. ‘You might nominate only one representative to go along.’

This is certainly the approach taken by housing providers in the Wirral, where Magenta Living operates. In the Wirral, a representative from 33,000-home Your Housing Group sits on the main Safeguarding Adults Board, and a staff member from Wirral Methodist Housing Association sits on the children’s equivalent.

Representatives from other providers then sit on various sub groups – such as the learning and development committee, or the hate and harassment group – and they then share information and best practice with each other.

‘I think in the Wirral, our [board] is recognising the contribution that housing can make to a full picture,’ Ms Sharpe adds.

Expertise in field

Sunderland-based Gentoo is one provider that has built up a lot of expertise in this field over the past few years (see box for the 30,000-home landlord’s guide to the Care Act).

Michelle Meldrum, managing director of Gentoo Operations, says that the establishment of the boards hasn’t made much difference in Sunderland because there was already a well-developed safeguarding structure in the city.

“We need to sit round a table together at senior levels and at front line level.’

Nonetheless, the level of involvement and understanding that now exists took hard work and commitment from all parties, she suggests. ‘It took us a number of years to get the voice [around safeguarding] that we have now,’ she states. ‘It [the response] used to be “Gentoo? Well, what’s it got to do with you?”.’

The focus has certainly paid off in terms of referrals – Gentoo made 36 referrals to the council’s adult safeguarding team in 2014/15, compared with 20 the year before and 21 in 2012/13. The number of child safeguarding referrals jumped from 58 in 2013/14 to 186 in 2014/15.

This suggests Gentoo’s relentless focus on encouraging staff to report suspected problems had worked. It has trained staff about warning signs to look out for and made it easier for front line staff to report concerns to a central team - for example a simple tick-box system on handheld devices.

All of the experts Inside Housing spoke to think that the creation of the boards and the requirement to hold reviews will help to build a greater understanding over the next year about how to best protect vulnerable adults and children.

Practice may be mixed at the moment – but due to committed individuals and organisations along with the Care Act, this is set to change.

Ms Meldrum gives one last reason why providers should look at improving their performance in this area. ‘If you are in a privileged position to be able to support someone in the depths of despair in their life, why wouldn’t you?’