Our plans for the year ahead
Our four ambitions guide our work as a Board. Our objectives are based on our learning throughout the year and what people have told us is important.
We welcome feedback on our plans at any point in the year, you can do this via the Tell us your views survey.
Ambition 1: Improve people’s awareness about abuse and neglect, and the help that is available to them
To help us achieve this ambition, we plan to take these actions:
- We have been giving talks to community groups and attending events to distribute leaflets. We will continue to do this.
- Last year we supported a community group to produce a film about financial abuse. We will encourage and support more community groups to make films about different types of abuse and neglect.
- To increase people’s confidence to seek help to be safe from abuse and neglect, we will work with some people who have been helped previously, so that they can share their messages about their experiences, if they want to.
- We recently updated our website to include a section dedicated to information for the public, including short films. We will continue to promote our website and use feedback to make sure the information is easy to understand.
- For people who do not have access to the internet, we will continue to provide posters and leaflets, including our easy-read booklet.
- We will continue using social media for messages and campaigns about safeguarding. We have over 1,700 followers on X (formerly Twitter) and also use Facebook and Instagram.
- In June each year, we take part in West Yorkshire Safeguarding Week, and last year we organised Leeds Safeguarding Week in November. We will run both campaigns again, offering training and awareness sessions for people who work with adults, and talks for members of the public.
Ambition 2: Ensure people’s views and experiences influence our work and priorities
To help us achieve this ambition, we plan to take these actions:
- Our Friends of the Board network members are from Third Sector organisations. They regularly tell us about their experiences of safeguarding adults in Leeds and help us hear about the experiences of the people they work with and support. We will continue to support and listen to the network and hopefully add more members.
- Many of the organisations represented on our Board have service user groups. We want to strengthen our links with these groups to give more opportunities for us to hear from them.
- When we are starting to develop new areas of our work, we will identify opportunities for people from Leeds to be involved, helping co-produce that piece of work.
- We will continue to consult people about different aspects of our work, including the use of a feedback survey on our website.
Ambition 3: Continue to develop a city-wide approach to helping people be safe from abuse and neglect
To help us achieve this ambition, we plan to take these actions:
- We will carry out a review of the current processes in Leeds to help people be safe from domestic abuse and violence, to see if we can improve how we work.
- Cuckooing is when someone’s home is taken over, often by criminals. We will explore the ongoing work in Leeds to tackle cuckooing, to find out where our work can link in.
- We will update our guidance, so that people working with adults understand when a safeguarding referral should be made.
- The number of safeguarding referrals from some communities is low. We will work with local organisations and partnerships to promote safeguarding in those communities.
- As part of a regional project, we have been developing safeguarding guidance for Faith organisations. We aim to launch these during 2025.
- We will continue to link into Housing Associations and providers, sharing updates on our work, and to hear about their experiences of helping people be safe from abuse and neglect.
- We recently held a listening event for people from the Third Sector, to tell them about our work and hear about their experiences of safeguarding adults. We found the event very useful and will host another event this year.
- We publish a regular newsletter for people working with adults, to help keep them up to date with local and national safeguarding processes and campaigns. We have over 900 subscribers, but we will continue to encourage more subscribers.
Ambition 4: Improve safeguarding work in Leeds by learning from people’s experience and feedback
To help us achieve this ambition, we plan to take these actions:
- When someone is being supported to be safe from abuse or neglect, safeguarding processes require that they are asked what they want to happen. We want our Board organisations to carry out audits to check that they are working to achieve what people want to happen. The results will be reviewed to identify where improvement is needed.
- We can be asked to carry out a safeguarding Adults Review when an adult with care and support needs has experienced serious abuse or neglect, or has died because of it, and there is concern about how organisations worked together to protect them. We will continue to carry out reviews that meet the criteria and ensure that the learning is widely shared to improve experiences for people on the future.
- We will continue to gather data and information about the work of our member organisations to keep people safe from abuse and neglect. We’ll use this to check how safeguarding practice is improving in Leeds.
Please note, the outline above is a summary of our plan. If you want the want the full version of the plan, please request a copy via the Contact Us form.
If you would like to read out Annual Report for last year, please just follow the link on the right hand side of this page.