Engagement and Consultation

One of the Board’s strategic priorities is to raise awareness and develop strategies and address the risk of abuse.

This priority’s focus remains on safeguarding being everybody’s business and to achieve this it is important that we raise public awareness so that communities as a whole, alongside professionals, can play their part in preventing, identifying and responding to abuse and neglect.

One of the ways we can do this is to provide information and support in accessible ways to help people understand the different types of abuse, how to stay safe and what to do raise a concern about the safety and wellbeing of an adult.

And so throughout 2021 we carried out engagement across North Yorkshire to find out what people know about the NYSAB and safeguarding, what information would help them understand safeguarding and their responsibility in keeping safe and reporting abuse and / or neglect and also find out what people want to tell us and how they want us to show we have listened.

As part of this consultation we engaged with lots of people such as:

• Adults with care and support needs;
• Families, friends and carers;
• Advocates;
• People who work in care and support;
• Care home staff and residents;
• Local communities and;
• People who are hardest to reach

We hoped that by engaging with lots of people we can now do a number of things:

• Review and update the suite of resources and information we share with people so they know how to keep themselves and others safe
• Continue to look at ways we can work together to co-produce accessible information for all with both the public and professionals
• Strengthen our engagement across North Yorkshire
• Make sure our engagement is meaningful
• Listen to what people want and act on it

Next steps

The engagement and consultation finished on 24th September with 392 people taking part.

We engaged with people via virtual sessions and also through our accessible and online survey.

We would like to give thanks to everyone who took part.

We have analysed the feedback we have received and based on what you have told us we have made 7 recommendations. The findings and recommendations along with an easy read summary can be found here: https://safeguardingadults.co.uk/engagement-and-consultation-feedback/