Carmarthenshire’s Adult Protection Committee has acknowledged its key achievements and set out its priorities for years ahead, as part of a new three-year business plan.
The committee, made up of representatives including Carmarthenshire County Council, Dyfed Powys Police and Hywel Dda Health Board, oversees local policy, procedure and practice to promote the welfare of vulnerable citizens in the county.
The business plan aims to set out its aims and objectives from now until 2013, with a number of key themes and priorities.
In setting out the plan, the committee has acknowledged some key achievements to date.
They include a significant investment in adult protection training for staff working in front line services, as well as peer groups. Such training – which has seen people with learning disabilities undertake training so that they could pass on knowledge to other service users – was recognised with an award at the 2009 Social Care Accolades in the ‘Learning Together’ category.
The committee has also played an active role, both regionally and nationally, enabling Carmarthenshire to influence adult protection development elsewhere as well as learning from best practice elsewhere.
Now the committee is looking to focus its intentions on five key themes for development.
They are:
- Making adult protection everyone’s business – engaging with more people to raise awareness and understanding of the issue;
- Learning from experience and best practice – prioritising the main messages from reviews and inspections, annual reports and other key documents to identify areas for development;
- Developing the workforce –building on the strengths and expertise of staff in member agencies of the committee to ensure all staff who ocme in to contact with vulnerable adults have the appropriate level of skills and knowledge to help keep people safe;
- Investing in adult protection – Investing in time, money, publicity, people and practices;
- Promoting service user and carer involvement – putting the people that the committee serves at the heart of the process.
Chair, Bruce McLernon, said: “As can be seen from some of our recent achievements, we have made some considerable strides in a comparatively short period of time. Nevertheless, as an Adult Protection Committee, we recognise the challenges that face us and – through this plan – set out the key aims and objectives of our committee for the next three years.”
