Summary
This paper reports on part of a research study carried out in three local authority adult social care departments in England, which explored links between adult safeguarding and personalisation. The study included statistical analysis of data on safeguarding referrals and the take up of personal budgets and qualitative interviews with managers, social workers, other staff working on safeguarding and with service users. The paper reports the findings from 16 interviews with managers and social workers, highlighting their perspectives and experiences.
Findings
Five main themes emerged from our analysis: contexts and risk factors; views about risks associated with Direct Payments, approaches to minimising risk; balancing risk and choice; and weaving safeguarding and personalisation practice. Social workers identified similar ranges and kinds of risks to those identified in the national evaluation of Individual Budgets. They described a tension between policy objectives and their exercise of discretion to assess and manage risks. For example, some described how they would discourage certain people from taking their personal budget as a Direct Payment or suggest they take only part of a personal budget as a Direct Payment.
Application
This exploratory study supports the continued need for skilled social workers to deliver outcomes related to both safeguarding and personalisation policies. Implementing these policies may entail a new form of ‘care and control’, which may require specific approaches in supervision in order to ensure good practice is fostered and positive outcomes attained.
Stevens, M., Woolham, J., Manthorpe, J., Aspinal, F., Hussein, S., Baxter, K., Samsi, K., Ismail, M. (2018) ‘Implementing safeguarding and personalisation in social work: findings from practice’, Journal of Social Work. 18(1): 3-22.
Image credit: Neil Thomas, unsplash.com
Founder and Director
Shereen Hussein is a Health and Social Care Policy professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), United Kingdom.
Shereen Founded the MENARAH Network in 2019, through an initial grant from the Global Challenge Research Fund, UKRI. She is a medical demographer with expertise in ageing, family dynamics, migration and long-term care systems. Shereen regularly collaborates with the United Nations, the World Health Organisation and the World Bank in policy and research focused on ageing in the Middle East and North Africa Region.
Shereen received her undergraduate degree in statistics and a postgraduate degree in computer science at Cairo University. She completed an MSc in medical demography at the London School of Hygiene and a PhD in quantitative demography and population studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom.
Director of Analytical Research Ltd, and Affiliate Research Fellow, Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Mohamed is trained in engineering (MEng – Cairo University), computer science (MSc – Cairo University) and mathematical finance (MSc – CASS Business School, University of London). Mohamed started his career in in the City of London in 1990s, working as a quantitative analyst for leading global financial organisations, such as Merrill Lynch, HSBC, Mizuho and Credit Suisse, before he began to shift his focus onto quantitative social research. Since 2009, he has worked as an independent researcher in the field of social sciences with a particular drive to make use of different statistical and mathematical modelling techniques for the analysis of large and multi-dispersed data sets.
He has worked with universities in the UK, Europe, Australia and the Middle East; publishing a number of peer-reviewed articles. He has also been invited to give talks and presentations at several leading universities and organisations. His current research interests focus on exploring the potential role of mathematical dynamical systems in the field of population ageing across health and social care. Mohamed is the Director of Analytical Research ltd and an affiliate at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, University of Oxford.
English 
Arabic