2. Keeping People Safe
• This is information to tell you what we are doing to keep you safe from
abuse, while making sure you can make your own choices. This is called
Safeguarding.
• There are a lot of groups of people working on this. They include:-
– Social Services
– Health
– Police
– People who provide support
• We have written information (called Policy and Procedures) for staff, and for
people who might be abused, to tell them what they should do, if they think
somebody is being abused.
• This information is quite complicated, so this is a bit easier to read.
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3. What is Abuse?
• Abuse is when people treat you badly, or hurt you.
• There are different kinds of abuse:-
– Physical abuse – when somebody hurts you by doing
things like kicking or hitting you
–Sexual abuse – when somebody touches your
body or your private parts in ways you do not like or
want. This includes
•kissing you,
•making you touch them, or
•having sex with you when you don’t want them to.
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4. - Emotional abuse – when people talk to you in unkind ways. This is things
like:
– Teasing you in a nasty way
– Threatening you
– Swearing at you
– Ignoring you, or not listening to what you are saying
– Shouting at you
– “Putting you down” or treating you as if you are a child
- Financial abuse – when people
– take your money, or
– spend it on things you don’t want, or
– take things that belong to you
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5. - Neglect – this is when people who are supposed to help you don’t look after
you properly. They might not:-
– Make sure you are warm and comfortable
– Make sure you have enough to eat and drink
– Make sure you have support to take your medication
– Take you to the Doctor if you are ill.
- Discrimination – this is when people treat you badly, or
unfairly because of things like:-
–The colour of your skin
–Your religion
–Whether you are a man or a woman
–Because you are disabled
–Because you are Lesbian or Gay
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6. Abuse is ALWAYS wrong
• If these things happen to you or your friends, you should tell
somebody you trust. You should not believe anybody who tells you
that any of these things are OK, or that it is a secret, even if you
think you can trust them.
• You could tell
– A member of staff who supports you
– Somebody in your family
– A nurse or a social worker
– A manager
– A friend or a neighbour
– An advocate
• Social Services MUST then find out what has been happening, and
why it has happened.
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7. Finding out what has happened
• The managers in Social Services will ask somebody like a social
worker to come and talk to you to find out more. You will be able to
have an advocate to support you if you want to. They may also
need to talk to other people like:
– Staff
– Family and friends
– The Police
• Sometimes they will have to talk to other people even if you don’t
want them to. This is because other people might be hurt or abused
if they don’t do something.
• If they do need to talk to other people, they will do it in a way that
makes sure that things are not made worse for you.
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8. Planning to make sure you are
safe
• The first thing that everybody has to do is to make sure you are safe while
they are finding out what has happened. They will try and plan this with you
• How they do this will depend on what has happened and where you live. It
might mean things like:
– Certain staff don’t work with you for a while
– You have extra support
– You don’t go to the places where the abuse had happened
– You go and live somewhere else for a while. We try not to do this, but sometimes
it is the only way to keep people safe.
• They will keep on checking out how you are.
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9. When they have found out what
happened……….
• Once they know exactly what has happened people can make special plans
(called Safeguarding Plans) to make sure it does not happen again.
• What this means will depend on what has happened, but might be things
like:-
– Helping you to know how to make sure you are safe yourself
– Making sure you don’t have to meet people who abused you
– Helping you to move to somewhere where you feel safe
– Helping staff to understand how to support you better
– Making sure some staff don’t work with people again
• Sometimes the Police will make sure people are taken to Court (prosecuted)
if they have broken the law by doing what they have done to you.
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10. Keeping you safe……….
• All the people who have been planning with you to make sure you are safe
need to make sure that the special plans are working.
• They will keep checking that the special plans are right, until they are sure
that you are safe. This might mean meeting with you more often that they
usually would.
• When everybody is sure that you are safe and that the abuse will not
happen again, then they will not need to meet to discuss the special plans
again. They will still have Review Meetings once or twice a year, where
they will still make sure that you are safe.
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11. Other things that happen……..
• We make sure that all staff have proper training to know how to keep you
safe.
• Social Services check that the staff are supporting you properly, and that
the organisations that employ them do all the right things to keep you safe.
This includes being careful how they choose people who work for them.
• We will make sure that people know how to keep themselves safe. The
Council will be running some special courses for people. There will also be
some information packs.
• We make sure that everybody knows who to talk to if they think somebody is
being abused.
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12. Who to talk to……….
If you want some more information, or you don’t
know who else to talk to you can ask somebody
in Social Services
01344 351500
Pictures from Changes Picture Bank
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