Why should they be abused any more than children? Child abuse protection and the implementation ofNo Secrets

Abstract

The parallels between child abuse and adult abuse have been frequently noted as public awareness of both has increased in recent decades. Both can involve the concealed victimisation of a weaker family member, for both interventions are difficult to implement because practitioners are loath to intrude into the privacy of the family and risk causing harm, and combating abuse of either type demands multi‐agency working. Significant differences between the two abuse constituencies have also been stressed, namely that adults are not invariably dependents reliant for care on the persons mistreating them and have the autonomy to resist efforts to intervene on their behalf.

Building knowledge for policy and practice based on service user and carer experiences: A case study of Scottish adult safeguarding research

“…It is multi-agency in nature but is generally led by social workers and is co-ordinated via case conferences in more complex circumstances. The administrative arrangements are thus similar to UK and other Anglo-American child protection models (Filinson et al, 2008), though most proposed interventions require the adult's consent, making the position with respect to autonomy somewhat different (MacIntyre et al, 2018).…”

The governance of adult safeguarding: findings from research

“…Thus, definitions -of the nature and scope of safeguarding and its target population-are core considerations in identifying the nature of boards' business and overall mission. Literature that explicitly addresses the question of definition is sparse, lending support to the observation (Manthorpe et al, 2005) that researchers have not explored it to any great extent; in the context of broad definitions of safeguarding (Manthorpe et al, 2008) an array of different types of maltreatment are included (Filinson et al, 2008).…”

“…The rights of carers, care providers and staff were also recognised, along with a duty of care to people who present risk of harm to others. No easy solutions exist when having to balance competing rights (Filinson et al, 2008;Manthorpe et al, 2008) even when practice aspires to empowerment.…”

“…Interagency collaboration is central to the question of board membership and to expectations about what members bring to the table. As reported in the literature, despite strong commitment to the assumed benefits of partnership in terms of coordination, consistency and positive outcomes (Perkins et al, 2007), working together could be disrupted by a number of factors, including inadequate understanding of legal rules (Perkins et al, 2007;Pinkney et al, 2008) and a clash of cultures, attitudes, priorities and thresholds (Rushton et al, 2000;Harbottle, 2007;Filinson et al, 2008;McCreadie et al, 2008). High-level strategic partnership did not always result in local collaboration (Manthorpe et al, 2008;Ramsay, 2009) and Boards were not always sufficiently engaged with NHS structures (Clarke, 2002).…”

“…GPs equally remained less well engaged (CSCI, 2008;Cambridge and Parkes, 2006a, p. 831;Draper et al, 2009;Harbottle, 2007;McCreadie et al, 2008;Penhale et al, 2007;Pinkney et al, 2008). Current guidance (DH, 2000) was seen as permissive and insufficiently robust to guarantee commitment amongst agencies to cooperate and commit resources (Filinson et al, 2008;Pinkney et al, 2008) prompting calls for a statutory duty to cooperate (Perkins et al, 2007;Reid et al, 2009). Nonetheless, the literature also contained a few examples of building multi-agency collaboration through a whole systems event (Doonan, 2002) and creation of a provider forum (Giordano and Street, 2009).…”