Responding to organisational failure and abuse

The Care and Support Statutory Guidance clarifies that Safeguarding is not a substitute for:

• • providers’ responsibilities to provided safe and high-quality care and support
  • commissioners regularly assuring themselves of the safety and effectiveness of commissioned services
  • the Care Quality Commission ensuring that regulated providers comply with the fundamental standards of care or by taking enforcement action
  • the core duties of the police to prevent and detect crime and protect life and property

Local areas will have their own arrangements and systems in place designed to respond to quality and safety concerns in provider services, including where there are allegations against people in positions of trust or where organisational abuse is suspected. In most areas there will be regular information sharing meetings between commissioners and regulators, for example, the Local Authority, the Care Quality Commission, Integrated Care Boards, NHS England; or there will be frameworks in place that can call such meetings as and when required.

Local quality surveillance frameworks will often need to interface closely and work alongside responses under these procedures. This will need to reflect the individual circumstances of individuals cases, but could be, for example: It may be necessary to pass information arising from adult concerns and enquiries to commissioners and regulators to inform quality monitoring and regulatory processes. Such information may, to help address concerns raised that relate to service quality, but that do not meet the criteria for s42 Care Act, or to seek and remedy underlying service quality concerns that are leading to risk of abuse or neglect in identifiable cases.