Safeguarding Adults Week 2024: raising awareness of policies and best practice

It’s Safeguarding Adults Week (18-22 November) and this year’s theme is ‘working in partnership’ which has the aim to raise awareness of safeguarding policies and best practice.

Safeguarding is a shared responsibility that involves people and organisations working together to prevent and stop abuse or neglect while at the same time making sure that the adult’s wellbeing is promoted. That’s why here at the Alzheimer’s Society, we are taking part in this national event, and we will be encouraging all of our employees and volunteers to be aware and get involved in the week.

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Our commitment to safeguarding

As a national charity, safeguarding is embedded into all that we do. We have an organisational duty to keep our people safe from abuse or neglect. This includes anyone who encounters the Society, including employees, volunteers, and participants. The Society is committed to taking appropriate actions to address any safeguarding concerns that are disclosed or observed. With an internal Quality Safeguarding team, this provides a consistent approach to safeguarding for staff and volunteers who may have safeguarding concerns for adults or children.

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Our approach

The Society has robust policies and procedures in place as well as appropriate learning for all our staff and volunteers to ensure everyone is able to recognise and respond to abuse and neglect appropriately. We have several ways that we have embedded safeguarding into our organisation. For example, our excellent recording and reporting system supports to identify themes and trends. Most recently, we have launched our safeguarding champions network to support corporate safeguarding across each directorate. There has also been the creation of a resource pack which provides our employees with clear direction on how to provide swift, appropriate and consistent advice and signposting, in response to comments about safeguarding or wellbeing.

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A snapshot of our internal events

For Safeguarding Adults Week, each day of the week we have a different event planned. The Alzheimer’s Society’s internal safeguarding team will be looking to build on the national theme by encouraging all our employees, volunteers and participants to work together to establish safer cultures within our workplace communities.

To mark the start of the week, we will be talking with our lead safeguarding Trustee and our National Partnerships Manager, Sophie Tucker, who will be talking about the partnership we currently have with National Trust and how we can support people living with dementia on their sites and keep them safe from abuse and neglect.

We will be having two live sessions, with one session including an external speaker, Natalie Savery from Leaderful Action who’ll be covering the theme of ‘establishing professional boundaries.’ Content will include an overview of our boundaries, explore what to look out for and the importance of understanding and being vigilant about our own and other people’s boundaries. The other live session will be a celebration of the corporate work our internal safeguarding team has been involved with over the last year.

In addition to this, we have other exciting events planned to cover the themes of professional curiosity, working effectively with the people you support and recognizing exploitation: The ladder of criminality.

All our planned activities demonstrate the Alzheimer’s Society’s commitment to working in partnerships internally and externally to keep our people safe from abuse and neglect.