BPT through direct services, volunteers and Partners deliver a broad range of activities for adults (aged 18+), including vulnerable and on occasion adults at risk.
Any adult can access any service onsite excluding services for children and young people.
A number of vulnerable adults live successfully in the community with emotional and mental health needs, the impacts of trauma and Special Educational Needs or Disability (SEND). Some of these adults have a formal package of ‘care and support needs’.
Adults at risk may arise from any area of the community or be a vulnerable adult whose ‘care and support package’ is no longer fit for purpose and needs updating. For example, an adult whose level of mental health need is now combined with a drug dependency; someone who stops taking prescribed medication; or someone who has been ‘befriended’ in the community and whose house or home is being used for a drugs operation (often referred to as cuckooing); a carer/cared for relationship involving an adult with Alzheimer’s whose behaviours have become violent.
It should be remembered that adults at risk are an adult, and they have a right to make decisions about their own life. These choices may however be viewed by caring workers as eccentric or ill informed. Safeguarding for adults at risk therefore is intended for those adults who have agreed to intervention, or, where the level of risk posed is a significant danger to others, or the adult at risk lacks mental capacity. (In accordance with the Core Principles of the Care Act and Mental Capacity Act)
You might notice:
- A particularly stressed carer, who makes regular reference to finding their caring responsibilities too demanding, this might include noticing physical injuries to the carer
- Changes in behaviour e.g. increasingly withdrawn, increasingly erratic and/or volatile
- Both physical and verbal expressions of self-harm, depression, suicidal ideation
- clothing that appears to be concealing injuries or sites of self-harm (e.g. long sleeves in hot weather)
- breakdown in family relationship, escalation of family disputes and indicators of domestic abuse
- a deterioration in physical care including clothing; injuries or bruises
- regularity of attendance; appearing to have a lot of money on them, or having expensive items, clothes, watch, shoes
- a direct disclosure
- Adults who persistently present themselves for support and assistance with various matters without obvious cause, potentially looking for opportunities to disclose harm.
- Adults who form an attachment to or an over-reliance on a particular member of staff or a volunteer.
In some of these situations, things appear to have reached a more serious level of concern. This procedure lays out the practical steps to be followed.