Qualification: T Level Technical Qualification in Health
Unit: Occupational specialism core: Supporting Healthcare
Learning outcome: Performance outcome 1: Assist with an individual’s overall care and needs to ensure comfort and wellbeing
Assessment criteria: K1.2 The requirements to safeguard individuals and their wider family/carers and promote principles to others in practice
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- All care workers must understand their responsibilities in relation to safeguarding individuals and their wider families/carers
- Legislation relating to safeguarding includes the Care Act 2014 (which also describes the different types of abuse/neglect) and the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006
- The Care Act 2014 describes the six principles of safeguarding which are:
- Empowerment – informed consent and choice
- Prevention – taking action before harm occurs
- Proportionality – actions taken should be proportional to the risk
- Protection – vulnerable individuals should be supported and represented
- Partnership – agencies and communities should work together to prevent harm, abuse and neglect
- Accountability – safeguarding practices should be transparent
- Each organisation will have its own Safeguarding Policy and Procedure, however, the general principles will remain the same:
- Any suspicions of abuse, neglect or harm must be reported immediately to either a manager or safeguarding lead
- Similarly, any disclosures of abuse, neglect or harm must be reported using the correct channels
- Where concerns are not taken seriously, care workers ca ‘whistleblow’, which means reporting their concern to others – this could be higher management, social services, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) or even the police
- Similarly, care workers should promote these principles to others, including less experienced team members and individual receiving care and their families/carers (some individuals may not even realise that they are being abused)
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