Promoting safer cultures is all about how organisations and individuals can take steps to minimise harm occurring in the first place. It is also about embedding appropriate policies and procedures.
This helps staff to know what to do if they have a concern to report, as well as allowing the organisation to have a plan in place for acting on concerns.
At MacIntyre, Safeguarding is designed into our way of working.
Person Centred Approaches
Through regular training, team briefings and other internal channels of communication we frequently remind staff that they should continually advocate for the person to be kept at the centre of the safeguarding process.
Empowering all staff to raise a concern
All staff receive training to recognise abuse, even in less obvious situations (which we look at in more detail tomorrow) and any staff member is able to raise a concern.
Whistleblowing
Sometimes staff may not feel comfortable raising a concern via the normal process, or maybe the concern is in relation to the person they would usually report to. In these cases, we want all staff to feel comfortable with raising a concern via the whistleblowing process.
Policies and Guidance
All of MacIntyre’s Policies and Good Practice Guidance documents are easily available to to all staff on the intranet, and reviewed at least annually to ensure they are still relevant and up to date with and changes to legislation.
Reporting Safeguarding
It is MacIntyre's policy that all safeguarding concerns need to be reported to the Compliance Team. We help staff through the external reporting process, making sure that all the right people know so that help can be given in the right way.
Safeguarding Log
Each month all Area Managers in Adult Services and Programme Managers in Children and Young People Services are sent a record of all new safeguarding incidents, together with guidance notes. All records in the log are anonymous for the alleged victim and the alleged abuser. This way we create a strong culture of accountability, aiming to resolve any concerns with appropriate and timely action.
Complaints
We prepared an Easy Read Complaints form which can be found on our intranet and encourage staff to use it wherever possible to enable the person who is supported to raise the complaint themselves.
All complaints are kept in a secure and confidential place locally and logged with our central Compliance Team.
