Editorial
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/14668203200200001 |
| Date | 01 February 2002 |
| Published date | 01 February 2002 |
| Pages | 2-3 |
| Author | Hilary Brown |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Sociology |
2© Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) Limited The Journal of Adult Protection Volume 4 Issue 1 • February 2002
Editorial
The papers in this edition cover some
important and controversial issues,
introducing new themes and revisiting
ongoing areas of concern.
In the first paper Dinah Mathew and
colleagues report preliminary findings from a
study of the implementation of the UK
Government’s guidance No Secrets. This
document mandates local authority social
services departments to make multi-agency
arrangements for receiving referrals,
conducting assessments/investigations and
sharing decision-making in cases involving
abuse of vulnerable adults. The findings
demonstrate a high level of commitment but
an inconsistent level of resource, with many
authorities relying on short-term posts and
temporary budgets. This seems to reflect a
perception that a short-term injection of
energy is what is needed to establish local
networks and systems but it is hard to see
how adult protection will be sustained
without an ongoing infrastructure and
dedicated management resource.
Already there is a divergence between
those authorities that have separate ‘units’ to
address abuse cases and those which have
embedded the adult protection function into
the existing care management structures. If
these are seen as opposite ends of the
spectrum it is important to plot positions in
the middle, which do not involve falling
between two stools. Also the authors note a
trend towards developing overarching
regional networks. Nevertheless the paper
points to an impressive level of preparedness
to address these issues at every level and to
ensure that sensitive and effective
investigations can be carried out.
The second paper, by Heather Sequira and
Simon Halstead, returns to the issue of
control and restraint which featured in a
special edition earlier this year (JAP 3.2) and
reviews studies which have documented the
experiences of service users who have been
on the receiving end of physical
interventions. User involvement and
consultation is often given lip service in
relation to protection issues without any very
definite sense of how or what service users
are to comment on. This tends to cut off the
possibilities for real consultation about
controversial areas of practice and this review
may help practitioners as well as researchers
to consider how a user perspective can be
made more explicit. The studies reviewed
show how users’ negative perceptions are
coloured by their interpretations of staff
motivation; how previous responses to
traumatic sexual assaults can be reactivated
but also that for some people such
interventions become a source of positive
feelings of containment and catharsis which
may be counterproductive.
We are glad to include in this edition a
paper by Ole Tom Røed and Aslak Syse
describing legislation in Norway which
governs the use of physical interventions and
aversive behavioural programmes. Regulation
in the UK has so far been through a code of
voluntary guidance (see Harris, JAP 3.2)
published by BILD (1996), soon to be
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