Oxfordshire County Council: local authority assessment

There were systems, processes, and practices in place to make sure people were protected from abuse and neglect. The processes used by Oxfordshire County Council had recently undergone a transformation to ensure improved responsiveness to safeguarding. The local authority had produced an action plan which outlined areas where improvements were required to ensure safeguarding was progressed promptly. It also highlighted that improvements were needed to manage risks which could result in poorer outcomes for residents. According to the Adult Social Care Survey for 2023/24, 74.71% of people who used services felt safe. This was somewhat better than the England average of 71.06%.

The Safeguarding Team had taken a radical approach to performance improvement in the last 12 months to target delays in the allocation and resolution of safeguarding concerns and enquiries. The delivery of the plan was a part of the Meaningful Measures approach which was overseen by senior leaders.

The safeguarding process involved concerns being received through the Social and Health Care Team who completed an initial screening for actions, and an emergency response if required, within two hours of receipt. The concern was then referred to the Safeguarding Team for further consideration. Oxfordshire County Council had a dedicated Safeguarding Team that retained responsibility for the detailed consideration of most statutory concerns and completed a Section 42 (s42) enquiry where the person was not already known to another social care team or where organisational abuse was suspected. Wider locality teams had been supporting with safeguarding enquiries and concerns during a period of change to the safeguarding team. The authority had reported a 37% increase in safeguarding referrals recently. The local authority recognised that clarity on what constituted a s42 safeguarding concern and when s42 safeguarding enquiries were required was needed particularly for care/nursing homes as there was a low conversion rate to s 42. Joint work with partners had started to ensure a greater understanding of this area. The new processes and ways of working had positively impacted the management and people waiting for both safeguarding concerns and s42 enquiries to be undertaken. In the last 6 months of 2024, Oxfordshire County Council received 4586 safeguarding concerns, the median time for a safeguarding concern to be open was 5 days. At the time of assessment, there were 48 safeguarding enquiries awaiting allocation, none had been waiting more than 10 working days. All concerns were reviewed on the same day they were received, and any urgent action taken to mitigate risk and keep people safe. Staff were confident that they were now managing the process much better and recognised the improvements that had been made.

Providers told us that the safeguarding concerns that they had raised were not always investigated in a timely manner and there were issues around poor communication. Examples of delayed responses to safeguarding concerns were raised with us. Provider told us the delays provided challenges in safeguarding people. Further concerns were raised about the safeguarding team being difficult to contact via the helpline. However, the local authority told us that historically, concerns were not always investigated in a timely manner. In July 2023, there were 286 concerns that had been open for over 12 weeks, whereas by July 2024 this number had decreased to 18. The local authority data highlighted that care providers, both domiciliary and residential, were the largest source of referrals for safeguarding accounting for 29% of all concerns. Recent engagement with the Provider Forum indicated that providers needed the local authority to do more to help them understand the threshold for safeguarding. The local authority said it planned to undertake this work in the future to reduce unnecessary referrals.

Changes to safeguarding processes had made a positive impact on managing safeguarding. Senior leaders identified the need to take a proportionate approach to managing resources available in the teams. The local authority was able to utilise resources from the locality teams to meet the safeguarding demands and ensure safeguarding concerns were addressed and dealt with appropriately.

The local authority worked with the Oxfordshire Safeguarding Adults Board (OSAB) and partners to safeguard adults. The OSAB had 6 safeguarding subgroups that reported directly to it to progress different areas of work. The local authority commissioned an annual self-assessment and peer review by the Local Government Association in 2023-2024. One of the measures implemented to address issues was the use of a Meaningful Measures weekly meeting to track the progress of waiting lists and identify issues for escalation. The local authority described the review process as a positive critical challenge, which allowed it to gain feedback from partner agencies. Work undertaken with the OSAB resulted in an action plan for the areas that required improvement. The Safeguarding Adults Board was reviewing its strategy and work plan to have a greater focus on acting on learning and measuring the impact of learning activity. It has held several workshops for staff to share learning from a Safeguarding Adults Review.

Partners expressed concerns about the high turnover of staff in the safeguarding team and raised concerns about whether staff had the required training for safeguarding. However, the local authority told us that to work in the safeguarding team, staff needed to have a thorough understanding, knowledge, and experience of working within the adult safeguarding arena, including S42 enquiries, Making Safeguarding Personal, and the Care Act (2014). The local authority may wish to consider working with partners to alleviate the concerns going forward.

Feedback received across system partners recognised that the new focus on multi-agency risk management was valuable. Partners told us that there had been an opportunity to engage with OSAB to discuss the high-risk cases which were held by partners and to discuss the people who did not have eligible needs under the Care Act. It was highlighted that the local authority had recruited staff to support the Multi-Agency Risk Management (MARM) process to ensure the correct multi-disciplinary teams were convened to support adults at risk of harm and proactively respond to the risk. Partners told us the MARM process had not been part of the safeguarding framework previously. However, Oxfordshire County Council had started to meet to discuss people at risk and it found this very useful.

The local authority was a strategic member of the Safer Oxfordshire Partnership. The Safer Oxfordshire Partnership was a thematic group that brought together community safety partners to work together to deliver on joint priorities and emerging themes. The vision was 'working together to reduce crime and create a safer Oxfordshire'. Partnership priorities for 2023/24 were, fighting modern slavery and serious violence and protecting vulnerable people through reducing the risk of abuse.

The local authority had made changes to ensure there were robust ways to embed the learning from Safeguarding Adult Reviews (SARs) and serious incidents. Serious incidents were not previously being progressed for consideration by the SAR subgroup. However, this had now changed and a review of 5 serious incidents had been referred to the SARs subgroup. This was now scheduled to be part of the publication by the board which had started inJuly 2024. The serious incidents audit report of May 2024 highlighted there was variance in who was notified following a serious incident and the decisions made. The serious incidents reporting, and the procedure had been reviewed by the Principal Social Worker who had also undertaken an audit to ensure compliance with the reporting procedure. A subsequent audit completed in July 2024 demonstrated case management forms were now being recorded appropriately where a serious incident or death had occurred, and feedback was being provided where appropriate to ensure consideration of whether a more detailed internal report was needed. The quality improvement protocol had recently been refreshed to take this into account. The local authority had a safeguarding operational action plan in place to ensure that actions were captured.

The local authority recognised risks to people’s well-being presented by the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) and actively managed its DoLS service and the applications submitted for consideration: at the time of our assessment, there were 1285 DoLS applications awaiting allocation. The local authority was using a risk rating tool to determine urgent responses and put a risk management plan in place for regular review of those people waiting. The tool had been adapted from the ADASS DoLS Priority Tool. The local authority decided to invest in Best Interest Assessors (BIA) and employed 5 permanent members of staff to support safeguarding processes; staff told us this had made a positive impact on the process. There were also steps being taken to procure a specialist service to address those waiting the longest. This led to 750 DoLS applications being completed. There had been increased recruitment and improvements to internal processes within staff teams which led to higher productivity. Senior leaders told us that DoLS data was being reviewed, and the authority was trying to understand the patterns of referrals by care homes which had increased DoLS applications in the county.

The local authority had increased its dedicated resources to managing safeguarding and s42 enquiries. Staff told us that there had been recent changes to how safeguarding enquiries and concerns were recorded and reported through the internal system. There had been improvements because of the changes made to processes and recording of the data, demonstrating a gradual reduction in the time taken to start an enquiry after a concern has been triaged. In April 2023, 35% of enquiries started within 1 week of triage, this had increased to 55% in April 2024. The Safeguarding Team triaged all safeguarding concerns that related to people who were unallocated to a social worker and care providers; people with an allocated worker were managed by that worker. Concerns relating to people in the hospital where the concern has an impact on safe discharge were considered by the hospital team. Decisions about whether a concern met the threshold for an enquiry were made by a manager.

Overall, the authority demonstrated that processes for managing risk were in place and positive changes were evident in the current improvement journey. There had been improvements in addressing resources and processes, but there were still gaps in working with providers to ensure they had an understanding of the processes, expectations, and communication.

There was a renewed focus on Making Safeguarding Personal in Oxfordshire. The internal audit undertaken by the Principal Social Worker in 2024, identified safeguarding processes did not work to ensure Making Safeguarding Personal (MSP) principles and standards were always followed The local authority identified that too long was spent on collating information and documenting it rather than providing solutions, focused interaction, and resolutions. The impact of this was that resolutions for the person were not timely or proportionate to the person’s needs. The authority had worked with the Safeguarding Team, and changes were made to the recording system to better focus on recording people’s desired outcomes. The authority had made efforts to improve this area of safeguarding; several workshops had been delivered and completed to ensure MSP was understood across the service. In the year 2022-2023, data provided by the local authority showed that 74% of adults involved in a safeguarding enquiry defined the outcome they wanted and 99% reported that they were either completely or partially satisfied with the outcome (68% were completely satisfied). Twenty one percent of enquiries related to people who lacked capacity and 80% of these people were supported by an advocate. Staff told us they worked hard to make safeguarding personal and actively worked with family members. The local authority had worked hard to implement the new process which came in a year ago alongside using advocacy regularly and translators if needed.

National data from the Safeguarding Adults Collection for 2023/24 showed that 73.08% of individuals who lacked capacity were supported by an advocate, family, or friend. This was somewhat worse than the England average of 83.38%. This demonstrated more work was needed to ensure that people could participate in the safeguarding process as much as they wanted to. It was recognised that the local authority was working hard to improve the uptake of advocacy as part of the safeguarding work. There had been training for frontline staff and an improvement in the quality of referrals. In addition, the advocacy provider participated in the Adult Social Care Forum, interacting with over 100 staff members, and also attended a safeguarding team meeting.