Safeguarding In Health and Social Care Assignment Sample

Introduction Of Maintaining Well-Being Through Safeguarding in Health and Social Care Assignment

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It is very important for health and social care practitioners to keep their health and well-being in a good manner. In health and social care, safeguarding is a legal obligation for all organisations whether they are public or private. The study reflects safeguarding and looking out for well-being and that is understood and checked within a health and social care setting. Doing this it is necessary for an individual to know all the ways and values of fully protecting themselves. To understand safeguarding individuals one needs to assess all the policies, procedures and code of conduct in relation to particular legislation. This study has been covering all these aspects of keeping safe in health and social care.

Understanding safeguard

A. Concept of safeguard

Safeguard is the deliberate action of a person who is responsible for securing and caring for others. This could sometimes be over security and caring which compelled the person in charge of safeguarding others, to reduce their stringency in safeguard actions. Over safeguarding sometimes leads to a breach of personal liberty (Aughterson et al. 2021). Hence, utmost flexibility is required to be applied in the safeguarding practice by the person responsible for safeguarding others. Safeguard and health and social risk are integrated into the approach. Safeguarding is also closely related to the independence of individuals. Hence safeguarding the individual required follows some sort of limitation in its approach to maintaining a balance between individual liberty and security. Health care workers are often alleged to be disrupting individual liberty and therefore, required to maintain cautious action in the healthcare centres and with the patients. Safeguards in social and healthcare practices are essential.

According to Carr et al. (2019), it has been found that targeted violence and abuse have been experienced by patients in England. This anecdotal example is crucial for further consolidating the claim that healthcare and social care practitioners are required to monitor their actions regularly and based on the same required flexibilities required to be adopted. Therefore, safeguarding is required to be appropriate and not excessive by social and healthcare practitioners. The situation of people with mental health problems is more disastrous for violence and abuse. Disabled people with mental problems are more prone to targeted violence and hostility with few options for safeguarding. The effects of psychiatric disqualification blaming individually required to be mitigated in adult safeguarding in mental health (Carr et al. 2019). Therefore, it can be said that safeguarding and liberty are integrated; controlling one against their will is over safeguarding which hinders patients to be cured effectively. Other than that, due to the risk of disability and mental health, patients of this nature are more prone to abuse and violence than others in healthcare organisations and society.

B. How to safeguard help keep individuals safe, value needs and protect individual

B.1 Safeguarding keeps people safe

Health and social care practitioners utilised several ways to safeguard their subjects. This required all-encompassing strategies for maintaining a balance between individual safety and liberty. Safeguard keeps people safe by introducing supportive elements in their practices and also helps maintain openness and honesty in approach. Care workers are effective in preventing harm and also confront any harmful approach to their subjects. Safeguarding helps people in three ways: preventing the subjects from coming at risk, identifying risk and managing the same accordingly to safeguard people and protect them by their own needs. According to Kruikemeier et al . (2020), social contract theory can be adopted for explaining how the safeguard keeps people safe. If the healthcare practitioners fail to reduce the risk of the caring people they are required to be compensated by different means.

This is an all-encompassing digital arena where the privacy of the people when breached, they are paid for by the one who took the responsibility for their privacy. Safeguarding corrects the potential harming of different factors of the people who are vulnerable to that harm. Safeguarding helps people be safe by maintaining their lifestyle and characteristics despite the risks of potential harm. As an example, patients are more prone to health risks or the risk of microbes; they are more safeguarded by healthcare practitioners (Singh et al . 2020). This has been done by segregating vulnerable patients from the others in the general ward to ICCU or ICU. This is also true for the people who are at risk for the rest of the population and confined in cages by the police. This way, safeguarding is not only restricted to microbial action but also social aspects of the individual.

B.2 Safeguarding value individual needs

Safeguarding also values individual needs in terms of maintaining religious, social, class and social parameters. In healthcare organisations, the religious values of the patients have been followed by healthcare practitioners. If patients are related to religion A, they are generally allowed to maintain their religious symbols which depict their value for the religion and are attended by the healthcare practitioners who also follow the same religion (Karim et al . 2020). The same has been followed when gender value has been in question. This can be reflected by the separation of the patients in two different wards in the same hospital based on gender. The risk factors of different genders in sciatica are different. This has been dealt with by social activists in different ways. Females are attended by female social care practitioners as they are more effective in extracting risk factors for the women. On the other hand, female vulnerable are more confident to express their grief before a female attendee than a male. This approach to safeguarding the vulnerable suits the situation of the person who needs care (Bayer, 2022). Therefore, safeguarding practices of this type enhance the liberty of the people in the meantime help retain value proponents of the people and maintain a balance between safeguard and liberty.

B.3 Safeguarding helps protect individuals

Safeguarding also helps protect the individual in different ways. This includes protecting the people from potential harm from others, harm from different external factors and others. This can be substituted by the people responsible for protecting the social interests of the people in society. As an example, when police arrest a person for preventing means, this action could be considered a precautionary action for safeguarding the vulnerable. This vulnerability could be of different types depending on the previous social action of the arrested individual. Therefore, the social action of the police is safeguarding the people of society (Kruikemeier et al. 2020). On the other hand, when healthcare practitioners use gloves and masks during Covid-19 pandemic, they strive to reduce the spread of infections among patients and themselves (Verma et al . 2020 ). These preventive measures for healthcare protection are effective for reducing health concerns of the patient and self. Therefore, the means and approach of safeguarding are different but the orientation is the same to reduce risk of health and life of the people whose responsibilities are vested with them.

B.4 Steps for health and social care practitioners to safeguard

Health and social care practitioners can safeguard themselves by ensuring that they are in a safe environment or not. Safeguarding holds to protecting an individual right to live in proper safety and completely free from neglect or abuse. Taking a certain step with an individual job one can ensure their work with people in a manner so that no allegations are raised within a workplace. There are some principles as well to safeguard in which their main aim is to control over lives as possible to live their life in their own way. In health and social care, there are a lot of visits to all the people outside the setting. All these can be a source of risks for health care practitioners as all of them will often be isolated from an individual. There are many different things that a person needs to ensure perfectly while safeguarding from allegations in health and social care. These are as follows:

• Following legal policies and procedures : It is important for the people who work in health and social care to work in a way that can help them to prevent abuse. Following policies and procedures at all times in an organisation is necessary and after following these under legislation one can say that they have done what has been asked by the employer and cannot blame someone in work practices. Having proper knowledge of their workplace policies and procedures for safeguarding provides a piece of relevant information on some of the steps to follow in concerns of abuse.
• Gaining the consent of the patient that one cares for: It is important for health and social care practitioners to handle patients or carry out their duties involving personal care or check-ups. One needs to go for the consent approach. Having a clearance is necessary and that can be verbal or written but with the help of this approach, people can understand what they need to care for and how this can be provided to them. Practitioners always need to visit home as well but it needs to be considered by them to undertake some special consent and then they can mark boundaries in place before these types of visits.
• Ensuring staff ratios: Ensuring that staffing within a workplace is to a suitable level and talking continuously with a manager can keep an individual calm and also give quality care. This can reduce the chances of mistakes being made and provide surety to the best possible care to patients. It is good practice for any workplace to have well-designed designated safeguarding which can lead to all the practitioners that are nurses and doctors for safeguarding.

C. Safeguarding individuals based on legislative policy and procedures

C.1 Current legislation concerning safeguarding

In this study, it is earlier discussed that working in health and social care requires an individual to work with practices and legislation that are set by local authorities and by governments in the particular industry. In the health care sector, it is often seen that legislation can be updated by ensuring the changes that come into effect and work with the right standards at all times. Some of the main pieces of legislation concerning safeguarding include the following:

1. The Care Act 2014 legislation is one of the important legislation under which there are several changes made in which people must provide care to their patients in healthcare. In care, safeguarding plays an important role; so that people at all levels in health and social care can work with an individual which can support their rights. This legislation outlines setting up the right level of guidance as well as support for practitioners by working with the local community, police, authority as well as NHS members. This care act consists of mainly six principles of safeguarding:

• Proportionality : Caring person-centred to ensure people they are working with action is required and that needs to be appropriate for all the levels of risk present by which response is not that obtrusive.
• Partnership: In allowing healthcare workers to work with each and everyone in the healthcare industry to utilise all their strengths.
• Empowerment: It is necessary for both the safeguarding board and an individual for providing assistance and help for each situation.
• Protection : It is significant for providing support for those people who need it most.
• Prevention : Taking appropriate action as quickly as possible in order to neglect harm and risk.
• Accountability : It is the last principle which provides transparency is needed by which all individual knows their responsibility in the workplace.

1. Safeguard Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 : It is possible in healthcare that a health practitioner can come into contact who has mental issues, physical impairment, Schizophrenia, Bipolar disorder or any other form of disability . With the safeguarding vulnerable act, they need additional protection as well which is the main purpose of the legislation.
2. “Sexual Offences Act 2003 ”: Under this legislation act people who have sexual exploitation risk need to be protected from others. All the legal offences might be committed to this act if legal consent has been given by other people and that can easily ensures abuse of power within a workplace.

Safeguarding is a major concern for the country as it plays a vital role to spread health and well-beingness in every region. In current circumstances, governing bodies to keep every individual safe from health hazards and diseases initiate various legislation and policy. These legislations effectively work to manage different types of health risks and support safeguard practices in an ethical manner. Safeguard legislation is working with a clear objective of maintaining a healthy and well-being environment as different regulations and act are initiated to create a healthy and modern society.

• “Health and Social Care Act 2008 (regulated activities) regulations 2014”

This act provides regulated activities to the care commission department of the country as it works with different modes of NHS bodies like “NHS trust and NHS foundation trust.” This act does not have a sustainable link with safeguarding practices however it plays a crucial role to investigate flexible safeguarding policies in the country. One essential fact about this act is its issues tackle technique created in NHS and sustainable improvement of provisions quality (Marcheselli and Ridout, 2019). This act is included different characteristics and regulations as it provides an ethical voice to patients for arranging good medical practices. “Health and Social Care Act ” provide support to local people to enable different types of services and facility according to their needs (Marcheselli and Ridout, 2019). This act is responsible to make NHS more effective and efficient as it works with full accountability and responsibility. Healthcare service providers adopt innovative modules to facilitate effective service to patients which are initiated with the implication of Health and care act.

• The Care Act 2014

This act is modified in current circumstances as it aligns with specific changes to facilitate better care service to old patients. Care is an integral part of safeguarding practices as it ensures a sustainable environment for patients and old peoples in different regions. According to the care act of 2014, every healthcare organization needs to investigate risk issues related to abuse and neglect behavior in children towards old parents (Alexander, 2021). The care act especially provides a boost to the principle of safeguarding practices. “Empowerment, prevention, protection, partnership, proportionality, and accountability” are the specific principle of safeguarding practices, which is initiated with help of Care act.

• Sexual Offences Act 2003

Male partners or other people mainly create this act to provide a safe environment for women and girls from sexual exploitation. The sexual offence is a major issue, which needs to sustain and restricted with help of appropriate safeguarding policies (Weare, 2020). This act is aligned with an unethical gap, as it does not provide any intimate care to individual people from their partners. According to this act, rape and sexual contract are not a part of health and social care as it recognized as crimes in a wide manner (Weare, 2020). This act is modified by governing functionality on time-to-time proposition as sexual attempts are changed with time and age restriction is a major issue in this context. Government understands that the mode of a sexual offence is changed with time so it is essential to update this legislation on specific time module. According to a new article, main provision of the sexual offence act is based on the acceptance of both male and female partners over sexual interaction (Theguardian.com, 2022). Every girl and women have a choice and freedom to create intimate relationships with their male partner.

• Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006

This act is launched to overcome harmful situations and prevent people in situation of working with children and vulnerable adults. This act protects vulnerable people in different circumstances as they face specific issues to compete with normal children. Vulnerable peoples need extra protection and care in comparison to normal people in such case this safeguard act provide crucially support in a wide manner (Scie.org.uk, 2022). This act is working through specific regulated activities, which are recognized as frontline activities to protect vulnerable peoples.

C.2 Relation between legislation, policy and procedures

It is vital that all individuals operating in the safety and health sectors attach to the contract and working regulations . Specific prototypes must be fulfilled and followed at all duration to ensure the health and safety of everyone implicated in the setting. Legislation, procedures and policies are some types of lawful terms that are mainly utilised in different sectors and stages. These legal terms are planned to ensure the safety and welfare of all people (Carr et al . 2019). Apart from that, they mainly offer a collection of regulations by which people must live at all moments by everyone so that the efforts of a person cannot negatively affect someone else's vitality. Moreover, subsequent legislation is associated with security and health in care settings:

Management of safety and health at work regulation (1999)

This familiarised the concept of estimating any threats that must illustrate potential troubles to health or safety before assuming any actions.

The health and safety at work (1974)

This supplies a rationale for all health and safety elements within the organisation. The major purpose of the Act is to provide security for all workers and the surroundings in which they performed securely at all times as well as to decrease probable risks to health.

Health and safety regulation (1992)

It helps to arrange a legal necessity for managers and workers to obey specific measures of threat estimation in order to decrease the possibility of damage to either themselves or anyone they might be supervising.

The functions of procedures and policies and legislation are different from each other. Moreover, Pieces of legislation usually have various objectives/procedures (Anka et al. 2020). These might be “sanctioned, regulatory, authorize, outlawed, granted, declare, or restrict” . Collapse to attend these in most circumstances influences an arrest. Apart from that, Policies and procedures also equip workers with an apparent familiarity with what is predicted of them.

“Control of Substances Hazardous to Health (COSHH) Regulations (2002)” is mainly created to implement security controls for storing any dangerous essences such as cleaning fluids, chemicals and medicines . Moreover, the regulations also protect the secure usage of these outcomes, administration of any spillages, management of pharmaceuticals and the secure dumping of any hazardous materials or substances. Additionally, the effects of the legislation and procedures and policies are also dissimilar from each other. Legislation instantly impacts all residents and workers straightly and administrations ought to assemble these known to all aspects of their “ jurisdiction” . If any part of the legislation is violated a prison term follows. Moreover, the policy is an intentional technique of principle to navigate judgments and also for fulfilling rational outcomes (Torres et al . 2018). It is necessary that all individuals performing in the health and safety sector are also attached to the agreement and the working limitations they have acquiesced to. Additionally, Specific standards might be assembled and obeyed at all times to make sure the health and safety of everyone involved in the environment.

C.3 Identification of policy and procedures in relation to safeguarding

Safeguarding policies mainly motivate individuals in the workplace to safeguard vulnerable associates of the organisation. Without them, most associations mainly fail to achieve their responsibilities, with destructive impacts (Elmagrhi et al. 2019). There are two essential documents, which instantly connect to the safeguarding of grown-ups, and these documents are as follows:

Safeguarding adults (2009)

This is the nationwide structure of standards for adequate techniques and developments for the security of weak adults.

No secret (2000)

This is the advice for materialising and enforcing multi-agency “ policies and procedures” prepared to safeguard weak adults from abuse. Apart from that, there are different types of policies that are valuable in connection to safeguarding.

National policies or legislation	Overview of significant key points
“Human rights act (1998)”	All people have: “ The right freedom from torture – Article 3” “The right to life – Article 2” “The right to family life – Article 8 ”
“Mental capacity act (2005)”	This Act also enfolds the five key declarations to safeguard adults who are incompetent to produce their own judgments. The Act also protects against financial abuse
“Legal powers to intervene”	There is coverage of laws developed to encourage abusers to be condemned and these also comprise: “Sexual Offences Act (2003) – sexual abuse Violations Against the Person Act (1861) – physical abuse” “Protection from Harassment Act (1997) –psychological abuse” “Section 47 of the National Assistance Act (1948) - neglect”
“Health and Social Care (HSC) Act (2008)” “Health and Social Care (HSC) Act (2010)” “Care Quality Commission (CQC)” Regulations (2009)”	“The Care Quality Commission” was designated to replace the “ National Minimum Standards”
“Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act (2006)”	This Act aided into the outcome of the “ Bichard Inquiry” which carried spot in the year 2002 following the “ Soham murders” . Moreover, “ The Independent Safeguarding Authority” was also designed as an outcome. The ISA also manages the “ vetting and barring scheme” which is nowadays understood as DBS .

Table 1: Policies or legislation in health and social care

(Source: Self-developed)

Apart from that, various steps are utilised to decrease the threat of abuse in social and health care.

• Inspiring enthusiastic participation
• Recognising and declaring unsafe techniques
• Encouraging choices and rights
• Bringing a person-created guideline
• Motivating the usage of accessible complaints producers

Conclusion: Safeguarding in British Nations

Safeguarding is a vision that was presented several decades ago in the British nation and guides the assemblage of actions that assure gatherings such as children, young people, and weak adults are safeguarded from abuse, wounds and neglect in an association. It is concluded that as the health and social care sector contains many companies and communities that are accountable for glancing after children, young people and vulnerable adults, safeguarding is crucial in order to preserve everyone secure from risk and threat. Apart from that, different types of policies and products are also designed to help them out along with the rules and regulations. Additionally, there is a numeral of routes that safeguarding may be utilised to maintain people secure in health and social care.

Reference

Journals

Anka, A., Thacker, H. and Penhale, B., 2020. Safeguarding adults practice and remote working in the COVID-19 era: challenges and opportunities. The Journal of Adult Protection. Doi: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/77130/1/Accepted_Manuscript.pdf

Aughterson, H., McKinlay, A.R., Fancourt, D. and Burton, A., 2021. Psychosocial impact on frontline health and social care professionals in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic: a qualitative interview study. BMJ open , 11 (2), p.e047353. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-047353

Bayer, J., 2022. Procedural rights as safeguard for human rights in platform regulation. Policy & Internet . DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.298

Carr, S., Hafford?Letchfield, T., Faulkner, A., Megele, C., Gould, D., Khisa, C., Cohen, R. and Holley, J., 2019. “Keeping Control”: A user?led exploratory study of mental health service user experiences of targeted violence and abuse in the context of adult safeguarding in England. Health & Social Care in the Community , 27 (5), pp.e781-e792. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12806

Carr, S., Hafford?Letchfield, T., Faulkner, A., Megele, C., Gould, D., Khisa, C., Cohen, R. and Holley, J., 2019. “Keeping Control”: A user?led exploratory study of mental health service user experiences of targeted violence and abuse in the context of adult safeguarding in England. Health & Social Care in the Community, 27(5), pp.e781-e792. Doi: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/hsc.12806

Elmagrhi, M.H., Ntim, C.G., Elamer, A.A. and Zhang, Q., 2019. A study of environmental policies and regulations, governance structures, and environmental performance: The role of female directors. Business Strategy and the Environment, 28(1), pp.206-220. Doi: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa53272/Download/53272__16309__10e10f11fe054bb6afc8a7a3c1ae8081.pdf

Karim, J.S., Hachach?Haram, N. and Dasgupta, P., 2020. Bolstering the surgical response to COVID?19: how virtual technology will save lives and safeguard surgical practice. BJU international , 125 (6), p.E18. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fbju.15080

Kruikemeier, S., Boerman, S.C. and Bol, N., 2020. Breaching the contract? Using social contract theory to explain individuals’ online behavior to safeguard privacy. Media Psychology , 23 (2), pp.269-292. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15213269.2019.1598434

Singh, N., Gunjan, V.K., Chaudhary, G., Kaluri, R., Victor, N. and Lakshmanna, K., 2022. IoT enabled HELMET to safeguard the health of mine workers. Computer Communications , 193 , pp.1-9. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2022.06.032

Torres, S.A., Santiago, C.D., Walts, K.K. and Richards, M.H., 2018. Immigration policy, practices, and procedures: The impact on the mental health of Mexican and Central American youth and families. American Psychologist, 73(7), p.843. doi: https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037/amp0000184

Verma, B.K., Verma, M., Verma, V.K., Abdullah, R.B., Nath, D.C., Khan, H.T., Verma, A., Vishwakarma, R.K. and Verma, V., 2020. Global lockdown: An effective safeguard in responding to the threat of COVID?19. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice , 26 (6), pp.1592-1598. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jep.13483