Phil: Welcome to the Research in Practice podcast, which champions evidence informed practice in children's, families and adult services. This podcast will be looking at safeguarding adults and with reference to a new set of updated materials developed for Research in Practice called Safety Matters. Now, my name's Phil and I'm one of the team members from Research in Practice's digital communication team but I'm going to be handing you over now to the two people that will be discussing Safety Matters, Jeanette Sutton and Sally. So, Jeanette, if we start with you with an introduction and then maybe pass on to Sally after that and we'll get going. 

Jeanette: Thank you Phil. So, my name's Jeanette Sutton, I'm an associate with Research in Practice and have been working with Research in Practice in one capacity or another for nigh on 20 years now and I am proud to be the author of this new iteration of Safety Matters, which is what we're going to be talking about today. So, I'm going to hand over to Sally who will introduce herself. 

Sally: Hello Phil, hello Jeanette. My name's Sally, I'm a social worker by trade, still a registered social worker. I've had over 40 years career working within adult services. I've not worked directly with children's services but obviously have access to some areas of children's services. I predominantly work with older people and those with disabilities and working within large statutory local authorities.

[What we mean by safeguarding adults] 

Jeanette: So, we were going to start this podcast by thinking about safeguarding adults in its broadest sense and then we're going to discuss a few more details of some of the things we cover in the new Safety Matters resource and some of the ways that they, kind of, intersect with various issues that we come across in practice. And also, that I came across as an author in writing this and that Sally, with her wealth of experience, has also come across. And just unpick a few things that we think will be particularly interesting to people, well, they're interesting to us and I'm sure that, like, a lot of people will find these kinds of dilemmas and these kinds of issues relevant to their practice. So, safeguarding adults in its broadest sense means protecting a person's right to live in safety, free from abuse, neglect, violence, exploitation. And in Safety Matters, one of the things we do first of all is give a broad overview of what safeguarding adults means. We draw from research, practice and people's voices throughout the resource and Sally, I wanted to ask you, what does safeguarding adults mean to you? Both in your personal experience and in your professional experience. 

Sally: So, I've been in social work long enough to be around when safeguarding first, the word safeguarding adults, first became a thing. So, it's one of these demographic things that happens from time to time. And it was actually in 2011 that the Department of Health actually brought safeguarding adults into the fore and it's now been embedded into legislation in the 2014 Care Act. It's the process by which social workers have their eyes open to see if anybody that they see that they are working with is experiencing difficulties within their home, within their environment, within the place that they are living. How they're being cared for, how they are being treated. If they're experiencing discrimination, prejudice, stigma. If their finances are deteriorating or reducing rapidly. It's about being alert to the possibility that this person may not be living a safe, comfortable and full life, and safe life. And it's not everything that we see is safeguarding and I think sometimes safeguarding can be seen as, like, quite a blunt tool to whack somebody over the head with. So, in the role that social workers have, it's about understanding what's happened, understanding the effect of that, working with the person who's been involved in that, who that thing has happened to, understanding if they want to take it further. Sometimes just talking about it makes all the difference.

Sometimes we are required to take things further, especially if they're-, it's called a public duty and if there perhaps is somebody who has done something, an act to that person, we have a requirement to actually do something about that. Now, whether that be informing the police, whether that be informing the court of protection, whether that be working with different care agencies. For example, if it was a carer who had done something to a service user, but they also see other service users, we need to ensure that whether further training is needed, whether there's a criminal act has taken place, whether the person first and foremost is safe in their own home or where they're living, it's that kind of thing. So, it's we're not the police, we work with the police. But we very often are at the forefront of finding out when sometimes things have gone wrong for somebody or in their family situation.

Jeanette: I think that's such a clear description, Sally, and what I would say was interesting when I was working on Safety Matters, the importance of core skills in that, curiosity being one of them. Sensitivity. And also, I would say, the ability to notice patterns and to bring together the evidence to analyse it.

Sally: Yes, yes. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think one of the most prevalent situations that local authorities and social workers have is financial abuse of older people. Older people, I think, especially at the moment, where the cost of living is one of the significant drivers of people not having enough money to live on, I'm sure that across the country, safeguarding referrals regarding financial misuse or abuse will be rising. And this is where we look at who, potentially, is draining an account. We work forensically to make sure, to understand what is happening, when it's happening, is there a pattern occurring? And if it's a member of the family, if it's a solicitor, if it's a carer, we try to find out if the same pattern is happening with other individuals. Because once somebody who has taken, who has caused theft, potentially are likely to go on and repeat the same behaviour with somebody else. In that case, if we identify that it is actually theft, that is a criminal offence and that's where we bring the police in and they would do their investigation. And sometimes, these investigations can take months, months and months and months and can sometimes result in no further actions taken, can involve international scams, so that's sometimes where we'll work with other organisations within the local authority.

Sally: We'll often work with Trading Standards, particularly if it's a company that's been financially abusing somebody in the community. Driveways, pathways, repairing rooves, that sort of thing. But predominantly, it's the older person who suffers the consequences of not having money, which can often drop them further down into poverty and that's often where we'll come into contact with somebody who is cold, not able to use their heating, is not managing nutritious meals, is losing weight. So, they may have come into contact with the GP and then the GP will refer on to us. So, we get safeguarding referrals from absolutely anybody and everybody all the time. And as I said before, not all of them are safeguarding, not all of them will be progressed any further.

Jeanette: And I think the example that you shared there about financial abuse and exploitation is a really good example of how safeguarding, the character of safeguarding has changed over the years. I mean, this Safety Matters resource is now on its fourth version and now we have, like, so much more around scamming, around, you know, digital fraud. All of these kinds of things that wouldn't have been such a part of Safety Matters when it first started. And it just goes to show that, you know, that's why it's so important to keep these things up to date. Because even if your knowledge is still, like, really, really good, knowledge itself moves on, so that's why… 

Sally: Absolutely, absolutely. I think it might be helpful just to go over the different types of abuse which is identified under adult safeguarding, or rather safeguarding adults, never quite sure which way round to put that, because I think it's so important to show the amount of difficulty that can occur in people's everyday lives. And when I was preparing for this podcast, I was looking through the different types of abuse and reminding myself again of what they are. And I think one of the first ones is physical abuse and that's fairly obvious. I think for older people though, sometimes where safeguarding referral is made and somebody has seen significant bruising on somebody's body, some of the investigation will be, well what sort of medication do they take? Do they take blood thinners, which will cause additional bruising? You can see different types of finger type bruises which can sometimes show that someone's been pulled out of a chair, or a hit bruise where someone has been hit by a specific object. So, that type of physical abuse is fairly evident but it's not always that someone has been physically abused by somebody else. It's just because of their age and their type of their skin. The second type of abuse is domestic abuse or, and that in itself includes forced marriage and female genital mutilation. And for older people, it is becoming a lot more evident now, as people are understanding the different types of abuse, for older people receiving care in their own home, so physical care, personal care needs in their own homes, and also with people living in the community but also in care homes, carers are coming across people now who are much more open about the fact that in their younger years they have experienced FGM [Female Genital Mutilation].

And we also do get involved on occasion with people who are in serious marital issues. Particularly, or with the learning disability community, who sometimes families are very concerned about what will happen to their child when they pass on. So, they will encourage them to go into a forced marriage. But actually, the person with the learning disability may not understand the full concept of what that actually means. So, it's as well as what I call ordinary domestic abuse, I mean, none of domestic abuse is ordinary, but the hitting, the punching, the coercive control, all those kinds of things which you see within somebody's relationship with others, which is often why it's important that we get to see somebody in their own home, or in the environment in which they're living. So, we can use our senses to try and gauge what is actually going on. Now, very often the first port of call will be when a social worker goes in and does an assessment and is known to social services. But there comes many occasion where people are referred in to local authorities who have had no previous contact with social workers and in a way, that worker is then potentially working blind because they have no previous case notes to look back on. So, that can be quite a tricky thing. But with the training that social workers actually have, it's fairly obvious that somebody may be experiencing these type of issues, depending on how they're being treated. Things slip very quickly I think, so it's quite easy to pick up. It's having that professional curiosity is really, really important.

Jeanette:And I think what was interesting when I was looking at the research that underpins Safety Matters, was there was some research that looked at the effectiveness of, sort of, mandatory safeguarding training. And, you know, obviously that varies across different organisations, but one, sort of, finding that went across is was that it's rarely enough on its own. 

Sally: Absolutely, absolutely.

Jeanette: So, having that space to reflect and to think about what things mean with your peers alongside some of those, like, other training resources that may be out there is really, really important. You know, not just relying on that mandatory safeguarding training. 

Sally: In social work, we often say that we don't work alone, we're not lone workers, and because we're in the people business, we can get it wrong sometimes, we can misunderstand something, we can interpret something differently. So, using supervision, using team meetings, using those corridor conversations is, 'Have I got this right? Is this the right thing? Have I suspected something that actually is not there at all?' It's trying to tease out those relationships and trying to describe something that you've seen but being very careful that you don't put your slant on it. You're reporting exactly what's actually happened and getting someone else to think about the situation as well and maybe to agree or disagree or add additional information. One of those things is so important. As is regular training through local authority training, as is working with other professionals. Because safeguarding is not just about social care. Safeguarding is not just for social workers. It affects everybody and anybody in the community globally. It affects us all. And all of us really should have our little radars going. You know, even the lady on the street that you might see being dragged along by her husband, potentially, that could be potential safeguarding, you know. It's about just being observant, just using those core skills, active listening, professional curiosity, checking out, feeding back, advocating, it's all those general skills.

Jeanette: And I think what, you know, we're going to go on to talk a little bit about, sort of, equity and intersectionality and I think one of the key things that you're mentioning there is not letting bias and assumptions drift into our safeguarding work. 

Sally: Absolutely, absolutely. And we, I think, as workers, we have the privilege to work with adults who come into the sphere of social care via the nature of their vulnerability. But we also have to do work on ourselves. We have to understand our own bias, our own prejudice, our own privilege, we have to understand those. And as we go through our careers and we become more experienced, we are exposed to more different types of situations. It's learning from them as we go, reflecting back on them once they've passed or moved on. And it's about understanding where you may have gone wrong, understanding where you may have gone right. Have you made a difference to somebody? I mean, that's one of the core things for social workers. Have we actually made a difference to someone? Not everybody where there is a safeguarding concern wants us to do anything about it. Financial abuse is very often, or relationship abuse, very often those type of situations, where they know that something has happened, a family member may have taken some money from their account, but they don't want it to become-, they don't want us to refer to the police. They're trying to deal with the fact that somebody has mistrusted them, has abused them in some way. I mean, abuse is such a funny word, but they're trying to get over the shock of that, the implication of that, the brokenness of trust between them and somebody else, especially within families. But also within care support because some carers work with some older people for years and if at some point there's a breach of that trust, it can be devastating, absolutely devastating for that older person. So, as much as we might want them to take it further, we're not in their world. We're not experiencing the relationship breach that they're experiencing. And at the end of the day, I get to go home. People are in their homes, living this experience, so we have to pay intentional attention to what somebody's saying to us.

The only difference to that is providing somebody's physically safe and free from violence, because they are criminal acts. And may need some sort of place of safety. But even with adults, we have a difficulty because we're not the police. We can't go in and remove somebody without extremely good reasons and normally it's just under the Mental Health Act, so very often we have to walk away from situations. All we can do is try to comfort and to support and sometimes have a little word with somebody if necessary. I mean, we're not the Mafia but sometimes, it's just enough that somebody knows that we know can stop that behaviour. It's that human behavioural thing.

Jeanette: Yes, yes, I totally understand what you're saying there. And I think, sort of, thinking about people's voices in safeguarding and the second section of the Safety Matters resource is on making safeguarding personal. Which is something that encourages person-centred, outcomes-focused safeguarding practice. So, Sally, could you talk a little bit about how we hear people's voices in safeguarding work, respecting their wishes and something about maybe how we can balance our professional duty to keep adults safe also with sometimes when, like you've said, there are actions that they don't want us to take? 

Sally: Yes, okay. So, I think one of the ways that I've adopted and I'd use this particular way of working with people, is having unconditional positive regard to start with. And what unconditional positive regard means is actually meeting the person in the place that they want to be, where they feel safe, where they feel most comfortable. I mean, I've undertaken assessments in cafes, in local garden centres, doing walking assessments with people, that kind of thing. It's because it's where they feel most comfortable, where they feel most able to talk and share information with me. And I also believe that when you're using unconditional positive regard, you're saying to that person 'Talk to me. Tell me what you're thinking, tell me what's happened to you. Use your own words and know that when I'm with you, I'm seeing you, I'm hearing you, I'm here with you. I'm not thinking about somebody else and the rest of my work that's, you know, piling up behind me, or something else I need to do. I'm valuing what you're saying, that you are important and that your voice matters.' And in turn, when we have a conversation, we're actually saying, 'We see each other. We hear each other.' You know, we're working in a partnership and that type of rapport is quite difficult to achieve. Where, particularly with older people who may not see social work or social workers in a particularly positive light, thanks local community, thanks very much national press, but they don't necessarily… and they're ashamed. They're ashamed, they're fearful, they're frightened. They don't know what I'm going to do with all the information they share with me. And I always make it very clear, I need your consent. So, in the conversation that we're having, I'm not going to repeat that unless I feel your safety is at risk, unless you're at risk of violence. Not just when I leave the front door, but if you're at risk of violence somewhere later down the line, I need to do something about that. Or if I find that, I hate the word perpetrator, it's such a police-y type of word, but if I find that the act that someone has done is somebody who works in the public sector, then I need to follow that through.

And I will always be very clear with somebody, very early on in an assessment, so they're making choices about what they tell me, how much they tell me, and very often they won't use names. They'll say, 'My neighbour, the person down the road, somebody who I know.' They very often won't use names at all. But in that initial conversation, I hope that I can use my personal and professional skills of listening, being kind, being understanding, being clear what I can do, being clear what I can't do, inviting somebody to share their shame, their pain, their upset, their fear with me, can sometimes just help people to deflate that level of anxiety that they're living. Because again, I walk out the door at the end of the day, these people are living in these situations. And I think, when you're having a conversation with somebody and it's an appropriate conversation, because very often I don't want necessarily to know about how well the sunflowers are doing in their garden. I do want to get down to the nitty gritty about what's happened. But it's the way in which you do it, it's the tone you use, it's the eye contact that you use, it's the body language that you use. And very often, I will see, when I'm talking to somebody, I will physically see people, their bodies relax, their faces relax. Their breathing calm down. Their hands sometimes stop shaking, stop tremoring, and that's when I know that somebody, I'm seeing somebody as another human being, because that could be my grandmother, or that could be my sister, that could be me in ten years. You know, it's being people first, seeing somebody first.

Jeanette: I love that idea about, like, you know, the sunflowers and I think it's an investment isn't it? And it's, sort of, it might not be what you need to know but it's along the road to get there. And I think that, you know, I often think, and when I was writing Safety Matters this came to me. We ask a lot of people to talk about what's happened to them and you think about it in your personal life, how often would you spill your guts to someone that you've only just met? At least by having those conversations that show interest in the person, building that rapport, building that relationship. And we talk about building relationships with people but it's also allowing people to build relationships with us, I think. 

Sally: Exactly, exactly. It's this mutual exchange of personal and professional but personal experience. I mean, that's the privilege of being a social worker, is that you get to meet all sorts of people in all sorts of different settings in all sorts of different environments, with good families, difficult families, complex situations. People who are from different countries, who don't necessarily speak the same language, who, you know, somebody may be a wheelchair user, somebody may have dementia. You're meeting people from all different walks of life and that is the joy, and it's a privilege, it's an absolute privilege to share time with people from the very beginning of their, if you like, social care journey, right the way through to when somebody's at end of life care. You know, maybe somebody may be having a terminal cancer and may be actively and very quickly passing away. But an awful lot of older people are living until very, you know, the old old, are living to the 100s, the 105s and at that point in their lives, they are physically frailer, much more likely to need help. And for the old frail, often their voice is a lot quieter. Physically quieter, but also people talk over them because they're no longer as needed, they're no longer as-, they're just a drain on society. They're just, you know, tucked away somewhere in a care home out of sight, out of mind. But they're not, they're still a valuable contributing member of society and that's where safeguarding, there's an awful lot of work that goes on in adult safeguarding within care homes. And it's about because they're one of the most vulnerable groups of people that we work with.

[The effect of discrimination] 

And if there is a what we call a hierarchy of vulnerability, I'd just like to bring in here about older people who are LGBTQ [Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, Transgender. Queer]. Very often, the general public only get to find out about adult safeguarding concerns is when they're actually reported in the national press months, sometimes weeks, months, sometimes years after the offence or offences have actually happened.

And I have been working with an older gentleman in a care home, and this will probably echo-, in fact, no, I will talk about the person who was living in a care home who had not come out, people often go back into the closet when they go into a care home because they've had a lifetime of discrimination, stigmatising, othering. They've had all those lifetime experiences and they are already experiencing loss, grief, changes in their life when they go into a care home. And they're having to adapt and get used to a whole new set of rules whilst coping with increasing frailty and illnesses and all those, kind of, associations that go on with older people. For the older LGBTQ community and particularly this chap I'm thinking of, what he didn't expect was then to experience homophobic abuse from the care staff who were working within the home who, because of their own cultural background, they themselves had been brought up anti-LGBTQ and within a religious fervour that doesn't accept the lesbian, gay community. This gentleman was actually subjected to, he was pushed over, physically abused, he was emotionally abused because they were calling him a fairy, they were calling him a puff, they were environmentally abused because they restricted the amount of time that his partner could go and visit him. They stopped him receiving some post from his partner and some of them were love letters. And he'd been with his, they weren't married, but he'd been with his partner for about 40, 50 years, it's a long, long-term relationship. And this chap was also experiencing dementia. So, his grip on reality, he didn't necessarily understand what was-, he couldn't put into words what was actually happening to him. Bottom line is, he fell, fractured his hip, was taken into hospital, the hospital staff noted that he had cigarette burns all up and down him. He died as a result of the fall, from bleeding from the hip fracture, but the referral was made to the safeguarding team because he had these cigarette burns.

And what it transpired was when the investigation was taking place, it transpired that two specific staff had been doing… they were able to investigate and two staff were identified. These staff were taken, were prosecuted by the police for neglect and it's now a criminal offence. The care home was sanctioned. It was found that none of the care home staff had any training in LGBTQ. Issues particularly for older people. I mean, from one small, small event, it mushroomed into this huge pool of discrimination, from all sorts of different areas that the care home weren't prepared for, that CQC [Care Quality Commission] hadn't picked up on, that the staff within the care home hadn't picked up on. That the residents themselves weren't aware, some of the residents themselves were homophobic, and it just opened up this whole world of unpleasantness, but the opportunity to change. So, the two staff are no longer employed by the care home and actually are no longer allowed to work. They have been disbarred, they are no longer allowed to work with older people. The gentleman's carer, as a result, has been offered a substantial amount of compensation. So, it's cost the local authority and it's cost the care home provider financially. So, they are required to now do this training. It's cost all of us. That somebody who went into a care home, who was that vulnerable, it has cost us as a society that that person was placed in that position where they were abused just for being who they were. And discriminatory abuse is also part of adult safeguarding and it's one of those things that is much harder to pin down. So, you can see a bruise, you can hear a slap, you can hear what someone says to you, 'My money's gone.' But it's very different when someone says, 'Oh, I think someone's just been unpleasant to me. I think someone's just called me a ‘poof’. I think someone's just ignored the fact that I'm-,' what can I say? 'They've ignored the fact that I'm different from them and they seem to think that they've got more power over me, or they've got the right, they can comment if I'm holding someone's hand.'

It's all that kind of thing and it's invidious. And I would also say that homophobia, bi-phobia, transphobia, has been very much pushed underneath the parapet but it is alive and kicking and it is alive and kicking in care homes. Sorry, I think I wandered off the point there.

Jeanette: It's fine. I mean, I think that, you know, Sally, you've raised such important points there in terms of thinking about discrimination and how that can manifest not just in, like you say, obvious ways. You know, but also thinking about how micro-aggressions, how they build up and how they cause enormous trauma to people without necessarily being able to point to one incident.

Sally: Yes, absolutely. Yes. Micro-aggressions, they're the bane of my life and very often, and I'm no different, I will sometimes get it wrong. And what comes out of my mouth is not intended to come out with, almost like a slur to somebody. It's not intended that way. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what I intend, it's the effect that it has on somebody else. That's the most important thing. I'll give you another very small example of somebody who I was involved with, which was an older lady living at home, very socially isolated and I was asked to go in and just see what was going on. There were a lot of concerns being raised about her. And over the period of about four or five weeks, I went back every week just to start having a chat, have a cup of tea, share a biscuit, you know, all those kinds of things. The concerns were real. So, I was able to take more time to try and unearth what was actually happening. But what had transpired is that the local-, she and her partner, who she called her sister, her sister had died, and they had been going to their local church. They had a very strong faith and they'd been going to the local church. But when the sister had died, the lady I was seeing, because of her physical disability, couldn't actually get to the church quite as easily. And when I suggested, well we can get round that, we can find somebody, we can find a wheelchair or we can find a volunteer, she said that she didn't want to go back to that church because someone had said to her they don't want the likes of her. Now, when I was saying to her, 'Can you tell me what you mean by that?' She was saying, 'Yes, they don't want the likes of me there. They don't want a lesbian going to that church.' And I was, my heart, my whole body just sunk at the cruelty of the words that were spoken. So, I mean, in a very real nutshell, we found another church, an LGBTQ friendly church, we found someone who could take her.

She's actually now using a wheelchair now. She's still very quiet, she's still grieving, but she's in a place where she's safe, she's in a place where she can practice her faith in the way that she chooses to and she's amongst people who know the journey that she's been through. They know parts of her life history and they'll have understanding of what her life history is. Carry on.

Jeanette: And I think that that story really illustrates what we were talking about in the abstract before about things like curiosity, sensitivity and the ability, you know, your ability in that case also to connect life experiences. Because we're not just workers. We bring our own wealth of life experience to…

Sally: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Jeanette: And that again, that ability to, I suppose, mentalise, to be able to see how we would feel in that situation. And I think, thinking about equity and thinking about intersectionality, there will always be identities that we don't share. But it's incumbent on us to have that humility and that curiosity and that compassion to think about how we explore them. 

Sally: Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And I was thinking about this whole business of intersectionality and applying it to social work and in assessments and in safeguarding adults, is that if social workers don't have the confidence to ask the right questions, or don't, or are deliberately not asking those types of questions, we're missing huge chunks of what that person actually is. So, I've been involved in several… it's been a privilege to be involved in some of these research projects, and I as a worker have learnt so much. I haven't come across many people who identify as trans or non-gender specific or non-binary specific because in the area that I have worked in, it's predominantly older white people, older white women who have generally been the group that I've worked with. But everybody has multiple identities and working with some of these projects, I have now met and I have come across people who are trans-female, trans-male, lesbians, black Afro-Caribbean, Asian, disabled, able-bodied, I've come across a whole plethora of people who I wouldn't normally have come across. And I know that I will have used micro-aggressive words, I know I will have done, because I haven't known what the words are that they choose to be described by. So, and I've had very open and very frank and very informative conversations but I've been held in a safe space to do that. And I've often said to somebody, 'Please excuse me first off if I say something that you don't agree with, and please can you tell me what it is that I've said that's not right?' Because I'm quite happy to be told, I'm quite happy to learn. And if I don't know, I can't then change. I can't then learn. The challenge for social workers come is that if they've been told that something, that they're not doing something, if you then go away and don't do anything about it, which brings me back to LGBTQ training for social workers, it's very few and far between. And yet there is a whole tranche of older LGBTQ people out there who are just waiting to be asked.

You know, very often people will de-gay their homes, so they'll turn photographs round, they'll take pictures down, they'll hide books, they'll talk in a very neutral way, they'll describe their special person or their special people as friends, sisters, cousins, neighbours, you know. But when it boils down to it, it's actually this person's special relationship that they have in their life. So, as a social worker, it's very easy for me to say, 'Tell me a little bit about who's special in your life.' You don't have to say, 'Oh, you're married and your husband is-,' you know. There are different ways of asking, different ways of drawing information out. You're not trying to trick people, you're just trying to find out what the substance is around them. And that plays into micro-aggressions. I tend to wear an LGBT lanyard, because for me that gives a visual clue. Some people wear black Afro-Caribbean lanyards and some people wear ones with different charities on. It gives people a little clue as to where you might be coming from. And I will also now say, because I never understood why talking about your pronouns was really important. And now I understand because someone's explained it to me very simply, it’s that I don't know who's sitting in front of me. I don't necessarily know if they're trans, male or female, I don't know, or they're going through the whole transition process, I don't know. But if I say, 'Hi, I'm Sally, I'm one of the social workers from this place, and my pronouns are she her.' They've immediately understood, those people who need to know immediately understood. A lot of people I meet have got no idea why I'm saying that, and that's absolutely fine. But for those people who need to know, it's really, really important. So, that's how I try and counter my own micro-aggressions, which I try and avoid as much as I possibly can do. It's a bit like knowing when to take your shoes off at someone's front door, you know, because there are some faiths, some cultures who don't wear shoes indoors. It's about knowing why somebody wears a hijab. It's about, you know, it's just about broadening your own knowledge as you progress in your career.

Jeanette: And I think, you know, it's obviously, incredibly important from the person's perspective and from our professional effectiveness to do all of those things. Personally, I find it one of the most enriching aspects of the work as well. You know, I really found it incredibly revealing to work on the equity and safeguarding chapter, which is, you know, section four of the Safety Matters resource, because there was such a richness of knowledge in people's experiences that aren't often brought into the mainstream conversations around safeguarding. And I think the more we can understand and know that we don't know a lot of things. 

Sally: Yes exactly.

Jeanette: Have that willingness to explore. Obviously, with all of that, kind of, sensitivity, but like your pronouns example there, I think. And I started including that in my email signature, which again is a really simple thing to do. And I find that it's something that not only, like you say, if people need to know, it's that information is right there front and centre, no one needs to ask. But it's also something about creating that conversational space that's there as well. 

Sally: Absolutely, absolutely yes. And I think it also creates an equal space between the two of us, you know, the person I'm sitting in front of. It creates that equality and it also creates that equity too. Because equality and equity, they often get very muddled up. And, you know, equality is around making sure that everybody has got the same opportunity, that we all treat people the same. But equity is about recognising differences and recognising that someone is as important as I am. And I always think of an example of a tree. So, you have this apple tree and it's very weighted with fruit and it goes onto the one side. Now, equality is me providing two ladders, to make sure that people on top of the ladders can actually pick the same amount of fruit. But because the tree is leaning, the equity thing is around making sure the ladder one side is longer, is taller, so you've got the same equality of opportunity. Everybody's got the same, you know, we're on an equal footing with each other. And it's just about spotting where these differences actually are. And it's just treating people as people first and foremost. I don't treat older people, they just happen to be a bit older than me. You know, somebody who's experiencing a dementing-type illness, well that could be me twenty years down the line, ten years down the line. And I think because in my own personal life I've experienced a lot of different things, we all have. Everybody in their lives have experienced different things, whether you're a parent, whether you have a disability, whether you've got a relative with a disability. Whether you've experienced bereavement and loss in your lives. What careers you've had. Whether you're fat, thin, short, tall. You know, we're all so different but if we just take the time to listen to each other, and try and pick out those things that someone is trying to say but may not have the right words, or may not have the words. They have their words but I need to make sure I understand what it is that they're saying to me, because I may not understand what they're saying. And I will try and pick out those salient words in order to try and build a picture of what the picture is actually of them, what's happening to them, sorry, within safeguarding.

[Human rights] 

Jeanette: Yes, and I think that, sort of, leads me onto thinking about, you know, the next thing that I really wanted to explore with you, which is around human rights and thinking about how-, so for me, human rights is, and it's one of my big areas of interest, so I've done lots of work on it over the years. One of the reasons I find it so powerful to think about is it's because it's the language of the universal, you know. Thinking about equity and equality and your example of the tree, it's saying that we're all human who need to feed from that tree. It doesn't matter. 

Sally: We're all picking the same apples.

Jeanette: Yes, it doesn't matter about our socioeconomic status, it doesn't matter about our nationality, any of those, kind of, characteristics that we may have. Human rights is about our shared humanity. And I think one of the things that I find very powerful about that is it's something that people in, you know, who are not workers in this area, who might only come up with words like safeguarding, ideas like the care, you know, law like the Care Act, like the Mental Capacity Act, when they actually bump across it. You know, human rights is something that is a shared language out there. And I find it, kind of, uniquely powerful really. So, and human rights and safeguarding reminds us to think about those, kind of, aspects of safeguarding that you've mentioned before, about valued relationships, the right to a private and family life. For example, you know, that's a human right up there with the right to life and human rights and safeguarding, for me, helps us think about all of those things in the round. 

Sally: Yes, yes, absolutely. What I think for me, we bandy around human rights. Yes, my human right to, it's my-, but what we have to remember is that we all have the same rights. They're all exactly the same. The right to life, they're universal, they're inherent, they're non-discriminatory, they're inalienable. I can never say that word. They're inalienable, that's the one. They can't be taken away. But it also means that I'm no more important than you, you are no more important than me. We are equal. We breathe the same air. We might look different, we might say slightly different things, and this is one of the things that I do get hung up on is privilege and power and power relations. Is that we are no different from each other. We all have the same right to lead our lives the way that we choose. That's my choice. We have the fundamental freedoms to the freedom of speech, to our religions, to our beliefs. We may not agree with the-, so I always say to student social workers when I'm working with them, 'You absolutely have the right to hold that belief in a certain thing. But as a social worker, you don't have the right to express it. You need to be treating everybody exactly the same. They're a blank canvas like you are a blank canvas. You are no better, no worse than them. You are no richer, no poorer than them. You're all in the same shoe. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we all have them. You know, somewhere safe to sleep, some good things to eat, safe, comfortable relationships, personal safety. We all have the same needs, we're no different. But some people feel that they are different because of their own sense of privilege, and it is still the case within the country, I believe, that people who are white, male, cisgender, oh, I wrote a whole list down. Able-bodied, heterosexual, have the greater privilege, have the greater power within the UK because there are more numbers of them. But that's it. There's just more people like that, that's it. But they don't have any greater right or any greater privilege. No human right that says, 'I'm better than you.' Because they're not. We're just the same, we're just the same.

[Considerations around power] 

Jeanette: In fact the very opposite, you know, in incidences like the Human Rights Act, and I think that yes, all of those points are really well-made and thinking about the, kind of, power, and that's maybe the last thing that we'll talk a little bit about, is about trying to understand the power in a safeguarding relationship. I think that's been a threat through a lot of the things that we've talked about. But just being conscious of that, that you hold power as a worker.

Sally: Oh yes, oh yes, yes. And in some ways, it is right that we hold power, you know, because the term social worker is a protected title under registration and regulation and it means that the government, the people, have given me the right to actually go poking around in your lives and trying to find out what things, and they've given me that licence to actually do those things. And it's professionalised the whole service. You know, Social Work England now is the regulator for social care, and it gives us that right to actually go into people's lives to try to make good change. But sometimes make changes that aren't necessarily good for everybody, as in child protection or as in people with learning disabilities or protecting older people, that type of thing. It does give us-, we're not the police but it does give us those requirements, but with that comes a power. And I'm very conscious of the power that I hold because they haven't met me before. They don't know my background. They don't know my local authority hat on, they don't know my personal hat. And we have to be very aware of the language that we use, how we say things, if we promise to do something that we actually do it. That we explain things in the language that they understand. The same as I want them to explain something to me that I will understand, it works both ways. And it's about having courtesy, respecting their privacy, respecting their dignity, and above all just treating them as a human being. And when you go into someone's home, as I go back to that lady who I was working with, I was very privileged to spend time with her because she actually trusted me in coming out to me. She actually spoke of her fear. She spoke of her concerns. She spoke of the way that she had been treated. She was very tearful some of the time. And there were a couple of times that I was watering too, you know, because I'm in that community. This is what could happen to me in my lifetime, this is what could happen to me when I'm in my 80s.

I don't know but we share this intersectionality business, we share that type of, you know, background and that life history. The whole aim of social work is to try and to achieve something positive for somebody. Something, I don't want to just go into someone's home and go, 'Oh, you need Meals on Wheels.' I don't want to do, I want to find out about them. You know, I want to find out, I want them to make them feel valued and important and cared for, personally, professionally, I can't say the word but within the community. That's when I know I've done a good job. I don't always get it right, I don't always get it right. And social workers are fallible as well.

Jeanette: And that's… and that's Making Safeguarding Personal in a nutshell isn't it? You know, what you've just said there. It's not just a phrase around, like, you know, outcomes the person wants to see. It's about that, kind of, the life that they have, the life that they want and how we can use our power, like you said. 

Sally: Absolutely in a positive way. In a positive way. There are, though, and it does come with a caveat. There are though times where sometimes you do have to put your safeguarding foot down. A memory's come to mind of a lady who was living in bed all the time, and the person who was caring for her was a family relative, and said that she was living at the same property but actually wasn't. So, this person would then come and check on her relative two times a day, twice a day. Now, bearing in mind, this person is living in bed, unable to wash and dress themselves, unable to escape from that bed environment, unable to react if there was a fire or a burglary or, you know, was just living in that bed. The fact that the person who was caring for her, loosely caring for her, didn't understand that physically clapping eyes on somebody who is that vulnerable twice a day is sufficient. And receiving direct payments to do that as well. So, it's sometimes, that person who was living in the bed is now living in a care home. The direct payment has stopped and actually the person who was claiming them has been subject to a fraud investigation because the contract with her wasn't what it should be, and we all pay, you know, the public pay for direct payments and services. And this person is now in a, what I would call, safer environment where she's loved, she's cherished, she's cared for, she's clean, she's tidy, she smells nice, she looks nice. You know, her nails are being done, all those kinds of things, all those kinds of things. But this lady then said to me, when I went to see her, the last time I went to see her, she said, 'I don't see my daughter any more.' Sorry, I apologise, 'I don't see my relative any more. I don't see her any more. And that's because you stepped in.'

And to her the most important relationship was her daughter. And I felt horrendously guilty because she was no longer able to see her daughter and for her that was the-, so sometimes safeguarding outcomes we think are very clear, shiny, very bright, but actually, was I really listening to what the woman was saying to me? What the person in the bed was actually saying to me. I don't know. I know that she's physically safe, I know all those things, but emotionally in her heart and psychologically, she no longer has a relationship with her daughter and that was down to me.

Jeanette: Yes. And it's… 

Sally: It's a judgement call isn't it?

Jeanette: And I think, you know, what we've talked about throughout this conversation is, I suppose, the tapestry of life isn't it, you know? It's in some cases someone will be safer but unhappy. And in some cases, you know, you get the magic formula of safer and happier. 

Sally: Yes.

Jeanette: So, it's everybody listening to this I'm sure will understand those complexities and the way that this, you know, these situations can play out. 

Sally: I hope so. And I think the one thing I do want to say is that social workers, we do get it wrong. We are human too. You know, we get affected by the rich tapestry of life as well, you know, bereavement, disability, ill health, all those kinds of things. We are no different from you, we're just called something different. But if we don't pay attention, with the training that we've been given and the skills that we have learnt, if we don't pay attention to those who don't, their voices aren't as loud, who does? Because it's not the community. If you have a care home within the community, it's not the neighbours in the next door houses that will go in and just check to see if someone's okay. They don't because they're leading their own lives, you know. And not every older person has a family. So, if you like, we become the surrogate family. We become the surrogate daughters and surrogate husband. We become those people to them until they pass away. And if that's the bit that we can do, is just give a little bit of comfort somewhere, it sounds very ideological and I'm probably moving into a part of my own life where I'm feeling that. It's about wanting to live a calm, safe, quiet life. Or a bouncy, charging around, energetic life. Whatever that person wants, you know.

Jeanette: And it's going to be different for everybody.

Sally: Everybody. Everybody.

Jeanette: I think that's a really nice note to leave it on, unless there's anything else you want to say, Sally. 

Sally: No, no. I've talked myself silly.

Phil: Thank you Sally, and thank you Jeanette for that wonderful podcast.