NYSAB Learning

Safeguarding Adult Reviews (SARs)

The Care Act states that the safeguarding adults board must arrange a safeguarding adults review in some circumstances – for instance, if an adult with care and support needs dies as a result of abuse or neglect and there is concern about how one of the members of the safeguarding adults board acted.

The reviews are about learning lessons for the future. They will make sure safeguarding adults boards get the full picture of what went wrong, so that all organisations involved can improve as a result.

The purpose of a safeguarding adult review is not to re-investigate or to apportion blame. It is to:

• Establish whether there are lessons to be learnt from the circumstances of the case about the way in which local professionals and agencies work together to safeguard adults with care and support needs;
• Review the effectiveness of procedures (both multi-agency and those of individual organisations);
• Inform and improve local inter-agency practice;
• Improve practice by acting on learning (developing best practice); and
• Prepare or commission a report which brings together and analyses the findings of the various reports from agencies in order to make recommendations for future action.

There is no requirement for a case to have gone through a Section 42 safeguarding adults enquiry before it can be considered for a SAR. However, there should be multi-agency involvement in the case and a likelihood that multi-agency learning can be identified.

A SAR may be arranged by NYSAB for any other case involving an adult in its area with needs for care and support. A non-mandatory SAR should only be commissioned when it is clear that there is potential to identify sufficient and valuable learning to improve how organisations work together, to promote the wellbeing of adults and their families, and to prevent abuse and neglect in the future where the case does not fully meet the criteria for a statutory SAR.

Appropriate cases for a non-statutory SAR may include:

• Serious incidents with multi-agency involvement that do not meet the criteria for a statutory SAR but that NYSAB wants to review as it is likely that multi-agency learning can be identified.
• A case featuring repetitive or new concerns which NYSAB wants to review in order to pre-emptively tackle practice areas or issues before serious abuse or neglect arises; or
• A case featuring good practice in how agencies worked together to safeguard an adult with care and support needs, from which learning can be identified and applied to improve practice and outcomes for adults.