The impact of poverty on safeguarding adults

Poverty has been described as the ‘wallpaper of practice – too big to tackle and too familiar to notice’. 

The Child Welfare Inequalities Project was hugely significant in shining a light on the relationship between poverty and social deprivation and the involvement of children’s services in people’s lives. Importantly, it showed that noticing the ‘wallpaper’ is as much a social justice issue as it is an economic one. 

The project team argued that in order to begin to strip back the wallpaper, an intersectional approach is required. Intersectionality examines the ways in which poverty impacts different groups within society and is acted upon by social workers differently. As social care professionals, it’s important that we reflect critically on our involvement in the lives of people affected by poverty. Without seeing and tackling poverty and economic injustice as a root cause, these inequalities are often further compounded. 

The connection between poverty and adult safeguarding 

Similar arguments can and should be made regarding practice within adult social care and adult safeguarding. However, arguably less attention has been paid to understanding these similarities and differences. Building on existing work such as the Anti-Poverty Practice Framework for Social Work in Northern Ireland, the British Association of Social Workers’ Anti-Poverty Practice Guide and the Radical Safeguarding Toolkit for Homelessness, Research in Practice is beginning to explore contemporary social work practice with adults in this area. 

A series of recent knowledge exchange events provided an opportunity for rich and varied discussion on this topic. Participants included academics, social workers and others working within adult social care in the voluntary and statutory sectors. We were also joined by people with lived experience of poverty and using adult care services or caring for someone who uses adult care services. 

Listening to the voice of lived experience 

What quickly became apparent was that safeguarding and adult social care overlap in so many ways. It also became clear that what may be called a ‘safeguarding issue’ will often be a cause and/or a consequence of poverty. Particularly around ‘self-neglect’. Financial assistance should therefore be centred as a safeguarding response.

People talked about tragic consequences arising from the targeted exploitation of people. Benefit backpay leading to drug overdoses, home fires resulting from people being unable to afford essential repairs, and a reliance on unpaid carers in a service vacuum being linked with abuse or neglect. 

Implementing meaningful change

This is only the beginning, but the work so far has shown that despite the breadth of possible scope when thinking about adult social care and poverty, some of the key messages are clear.

Firstly, we need to take a whole systems approach that goes far beyond the individual practitioner. Community and voluntary sector partners are key to making real change on a local level, but we also need to be looking outwards. How can we involve the Department for Work and Pensions, commissioning and join the dots between messages within Safeguarding Adult Reviews?

Then we need to draw on existing knowledge to think creatively and share ideas and resources across local areas. How might different ways of distributing the Household Support Fund for example, be useful? 

Lastly, we need to stay close to the experiences of those who have lived and are living in poverty. We must respond in ways that are specific to meeting the needs of people subject to multiple oppressions. A tension between human rights based practice and more procedural ways of working came up repeatedly at the events as a frustration. 

In order to do adult safeguarding well, we must keep our eyes on the wallpaper.