What is a Safeguarding Adults Review

What is a Safeguarding Adults Review

As a Safeguarding Adults Board, one of our core duties is to carry out Safeguarding Adult Reviews.

The statutory guidance for the Care Act 2014 states that Safeguarding Adults Boards must arrange a SAR when:

• an adult in its area dies as a result of abuse or neglect, whether known or suspected, and there is concern that partner agencies could have worked more effectively to protect the adult.
• An adult in its area has not died, but the SAB know or suspects that the adult has experienced serious abuse or neglect. In the context of SARs, something can be considered serious abuse or neglect where, for example the individual would have been likely to have died but for an intervention, or has suffered permanent harm or has reduced capacity or quality of life (whether because of physical or psychological effects) as a result of the abuse or neglect.
• SABs are free to arrange for a SAR in any other situations involving an adult in its area with needs for care and support.

Purpose of a SAR

Learning lessons 

SARs should seek to determine what the relevant agencies and individuals involved in the case might have done differently that could have prevented harm or death. This is so that lessons can be learned from the case and those lessons applied to future cases to prevent similar harm occurring again.

It is vital, if individuals and organisations are to be able to learn lessons from the past, that reviews are trusted and safe experiences that encourage honesty, transparency and sharing of information to obtain maximum benefit from them. If individuals and their organisations are fearful of SARs their response will be defensive and their participation guarded and partial.

Its purpose is not to hold any individual or organisation to account. Other processes exist for that, including criminal proceedings, disciplinary procedures, employment law and systems of service and professional regulation, such as CQC and the Nursing and Midwifery Council, the Health and Care Professions Council, and the General Medical Council.

Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Safeguarding Adults Board has a SAR Decision Making Panel which is a sub group of the SAB which is convened upon receipt of a referral. This panel considers all SAR referrals against the statutory criteria.