Safeguarding and Vulnerabilities Team
Safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility
The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital is dedicated to safeguarding everyone we care for and anyone who works at or visits our hospital. The Safeguarding Team, work with other professional services, such as social services, community teams and the police. This helps to ensure adults, children, young people, and families are safe and supported.
Safeguarding adults
If it is an emergency and immediate Police support is required - please call 999
If you think an Adult in the ROH is a victim of abuse or neglect, please raise your concerns with the Local Authority, safer neighbourhood team or police website in the borough where the service user is living right now. If the incident happened at the ROH, then raise your concerns with:
The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Safeguarding Team
0121 685 4000 Ext 55822
Out of Hours
Please call our Clinical Site Managers via switchboard on 0121 685 4000, ask for bleep 2627
The Care Act (2014) defines Safeguarding adults as, protecting a person’s right to live in safety, free from abuse and neglect. The Care Act 2014 defines an adult at risk as a person:
- Who is 18 years and over
- Who has needs for care and support (whether or not the local authority is meeting any of those needs)
- Is experiencing, or at risk of abuse or neglect
- Who as a result of those care and support needs is unable to protect themselves from either the risk of or the experience of abuse or, neglect
The Care Act (2014) promotes ‘Making Safeguarding Personal’ which means that the adult at risk should be at the centre of all enquiries and decisions being made throughout the safeguarding process. As a Trust this is really important to us.
Abuse can be something that is done to a person or omitted from being done. Abuse may consist of single or repeated acts and can be carried out by anyone, in any setting. It may result in significant harm to or exploitation of, the individual.
Abuse can include one or more of the following:
Physical abuse is an act where one person uses their body in order to inflict intentional harm or injury upon another person this includes hitting, pinching, deliberately giving too much medication or physically restraining someone in an inappropriate way - for example, being locked in or force-fed.
Financial Abuse this includes taking another person's money or possessions - for example, having money or property stolen, being pressured into giving people money or changing a will, misuse of benefits, not being allowed access to money.
Sexual Abuse this includes any sexual act to which the vulnerable adult has not consented and may not understand. For example, being touched or kissed when it is not wanted, being made to touch or kiss someone else, being raped, being made to listen to sexual comments or forced to look at sexual acts or materials
Emotional and psychological abuse include mostly non-physical behaviours that the abuser uses to control, isolate, or frighten you. Often, the abuser uses it to break down your self-esteem and self-worth in order to create a psychological dependency on them
Discrimination: This includes racism, sexism or acts based on a person’s disability, age or sexual orientation. It also includes other forms of harassment, slurs or similar treatment such as disability hate crime.
Organisational/Institutional: Neglect and poor care practice within a care setting such as a hospital or care home or in relation to care provided in someone’s own home ranging from one-off incidents to ongoing ill-treatment. It can be neglect or poor practice as a result of the structure, policies, processes and practices within a care setting.
Neglect and Acts of Omission: This includes ignoring or withholding physical or medical care needs. Examples are failing to provide appropriate food, shelter, heating, clothing, medical care, hygiene, personal care; inappropriate use of medication or over-medication.
Self-neglect: Self-neglect covers a wide range of behaviour including neglecting to care for one’s personal hygiene, health or surroundings and behaviour such as hoarding.
Abuse of Individual Rights/discriminatory abuse/racial abuse: Abuse of individual rights is a violation of human and civil rights by any other person or persons. Discriminatory abuse consists of abusive or derisive attitudes or behaviour based on a person’s sex, sexuality, ethnic origin, race, culture, age, disability or any other discriminatory abuse - this includes hate crime. Forced marriage is also an abuse of human rights and falls within the definition of adult abuse.
Domestic Abuse is an incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening, degrading and violent behaviour, including sexual violence, in the majority of cases by a partner or ex-partner, but also by a family member or carer. It is very common. In the vast majority of cases, it is experienced by women and is perpetrated by men.
Domestic abuse can include, but is not limited to, the following:
Coercive control (a pattern of intimidation, degradation, isolation and control with the use or threat of physical or sexual violence)
Psychological and/or emotional abuse.
Physical or sexual abuse.
Modern Slavery: Encompasses slavery, human trafficking, forced labour and domestic servitude of the adult at risk.
Hate Crime is where a crime is committed against a person specifically because of their gender, ethnicity, disability, religious belief, or sexual orientation. If an adult at risk is specifically targeted as a victim of crime this is a hate crime.
Mate Crime is where someone befriends an adult at risk with the intention of exploiting or abusing them. The person often believes they are their ‘friend’ but will go on to be abused e.g. financially, physically or psychologically.
Forced Marriage is when you face physical pressure to marry (for example, threats, physical violence, or sexual violence) or emotional and psychological pressure (e.g., if you’re made to feel like you’re bringing shame on your family).
Forced marriage is illegal in England and Wales. This includes:
- taking someone overseas to force them to marry (whether or not the forced marriage takes place)
- marrying someone who lacks the mental capacity to consent to the marriage (whether they’re pressured to or not)
Honour Based Abuse is a crime or incident committed to protect or defend the 'honour' of a family or community. If your family or community think you've shamed or embarrassed them by behaving in a certain way, they may punish you for breaking their 'honour' code.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) involves the partial or total removal of external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. The practice has no health benefits for girls and women. FGM is mostly carried out on young girls between infancy and age 15. It is considered child abuse and is illegal in the UK.
Safeguarding children
If it is an emergency and immediate Police support is required, please call 999
Children's Advice & Support Service (CASS)
If you have any concerns about the safety and/or welfare of a child or young person telephone the CASS on 0121 303 1888 or via secure email;
NSPCC
Contact trained NSPCC helpline counsellors 24 hours a day by email or our online reporting form. You can also call the Helpline Monday to Friday 8am – 10pm and 9am – 6pm at the weekend.
Childline
Childline is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Telephone 0800 1111 you’ll get through to a counsellor, they’re there to listen and support you.
Birmingham Safeguarding Adults Board
Telephone 0121 303 1234. Adult Social Care Contact Centre staff will look at referrals made online from Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.
If you believe that the referral you are making is urgent and needs to be responded to when Adult Social Care staff are not routinely available, please contact our Out of Hours team on 0121 464 9001
Samaritans
Whatever you're going through, a Samaritan will face it with you. Samaritans are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Call 116 123
authorities, working with partner organisations and agencies, to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children in their area. The Children and Social Work Act 2017 strengthens this already important relationship by placing new duties on key agencies in a local area.
All practitioners should follow the principles of the Children Act 1989 and 2004 – that the welfare of the child is paramount.
Working Together to Safeguard Children (2018) is the statutory guidance covering the legislative requirements placed on individual services.
Working Together defines safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children as:
- Protecting children from maltreatment
- Preventing impairment of children’s health or development
- Ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care
- Taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes
Child abuse is any form of physical, emotional or sexual mistreatment or lack of care (neglect) that leads to injury or harm.
Abuse (also called Significant Harm) can happen to a child at any age. Abusers can be adults but not just parents or carers, abuse often occurs within a relationship of trust e.g. a teacher, carer, family friend or youth leader.
There are four main types of abuse:
Physical abuse
Physical abuse may involve hitting, shaking, throwing, poisoning, burning or scalding, drowning, suffocating, or otherwise causing physical harm to a child. Physical harm may also be caused when a parent or carer fabricates the symptoms of, or deliberately induces, illness in a child.
Emotional abuse
Emotional abuse is the persistent emotional maltreatment of a child such as to cause severe and persistent adverse effects on the child’s emotional development. It may involve conveying to children that they are worthless or unloved, inadequate, or valued only insofar as they meet the needs of another person. It may feature age or developmentally inappropriate expectations being imposed on children. These may include interactions that are beyond the child’s developmental capability, as well as overprotection and limitation of exploration and learning, or preventing the child participating in normal social interaction.
It may involve seeing or hearing the ill-treatment of another. It may involve serious bullying, causing children frequently to feel frightened or in danger, or the exploitation or corruption of children.
Sexual abuse
Sexual abuse involves forcing or enticing a child or young person to take part in sexual activities, including prostitution, whether or not the child is aware of what is happening. The activities may involve physical contact, including penetrative (e.g. rape, buggery or oral sex) or non-penetrative acts. They may include non-contact activities, such as involving children in looking at, or in the production of, sexual online images, watching sexual activities, or encouraging children to behave in sexually inappropriate ways.
Neglect
Neglect is the persistent failure to meet a child’s basic physical and/or psychological needs, likely to result in the serious impairment of the child’s health or development. Neglect may occur during pregnancy as a result of maternal substance abuse. Once a child is born, neglect may involve a parent or carer failing to:
- provide adequate food, clothing, and shelter (including exclusion from home or abandonment)
- protect a child from physical and emotional harm or danger
- ensure adequate supervision (including the use of inadequate care-givers)
- ensure access to appropriate medical care or treatment.
It may also include neglect of, or unresponsiveness to, a child’s basic emotional needs.
The Safeguarding and Vulnerabilities Team at ROH
The Safeguarding and Vulnerabilities Team includes:
- Safeguarding Lead Nurse
- Senior Named Nurse for Adults, Children and Domestic Abuse
- Named Nurse for Children and Adults
- Safeguarding Nurse
- Named Doctor for Safeguarding Children
- Mental Health and Dementia Practitioner
- Transition to Adult Services Clinical Nurse Specialist
- Transition to Adult Services Nurse
- Learning Disabilities Clinical Nurse Specialist
- Learning Disabilities Liaison Nurse
- Safeguarding Administrator
- Safeguarding Administrator Support
The Trust Safeguarding Committee meets bimonthly oversees the adults, children, and young people at risk activity in the Trust. This is chaired by Safeguarding Lead Nurse and, reports to the Quality and Safety Committee a sub-committee of the Trust Board. As a Trust we annually review our systems and processes and regularly update the Trust Board, to monitor safeguarding activity across the organisation and the arrangements in place. The Trust contributes to the local Safeguarding Adults Board (BSABB) and Children Safeguarding Partnership (BSCP) arrangements.
The Trust works to ensure that there are robust systems, policies, and procedures in place to guide and support staff. All policies are available on the Trust intranet site for all staff to access.
- All staff receive Safeguarding training appropriate to their roles and responsibilities as per the Inter-collegiate documents for adults and children, Working Together to Safeguard Children (2018) and The Care Act (2014). The training assists staff in confidently identifying children, young people and adults at risk of abuse and/or neglect and following internal/external safeguarding procedures.
- The Trusts Executive Director and Lead Nurse for Safeguarding provides assurance for the organisation in relation to Safeguarding.
- The Trust has a Safeguarding Lead Nurse, Senior Named Nurse, Named Nurse, and Safeguarding Nurse who provide support, advice and supervision to staff.
- The Safeguarding Team regularly undertake audits to ensure there are no gaps in service provision and report outcomes to the Safeguarding Committee.
- The Lead Safeguarding Nurse completes an annual Safeguarding Report to the Trusts Board and Birmingham Safeguarding Boards/Partnership.
- The Trust has Safeguarding policies and guidance in line with local and national guidance which are regularly reviewed and updated. These include Safeguarding Children and families, Safeguarding Adults at Risk, PREVENT, Domestic Abuse, Managing Allegations Against Staff -Person in Position of Trust. Guidance includes Was Not Brought (WNB), Did Not Attend (DNA), Information sharing, Suspected Non-accidental Injury, how to complete lateral checks, safeguarding alerts and domestic abuse pathway.
- The Trust have clinical and non- clinical Safeguarding Champions, Domestic Abuse Champions and Mental Health First Aiders.
- Staff are encouraged to raise any concerns regarding a Person in Position of Trust in line with statutory guidance and our Trust has a Position of Trust Lead who will sensitively manage allegations against staff.
- Robust safer recruitment process which includes monitoring Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks to ensure appropriate staff are suitable for the positions.
- All staff engage with multi-agency working and appropriate information sharing to ensure we safeguard children, young people and adults. This includes identifying children who are subject to child protection plans (CP), Child in Need plans (CIN), Early Help plans (EH), Care Orders via the Trusts First Contact Forms.
- Staff regularly liaise with external organisations such as social care, mental health services, education establishments (school/nursery), health visitors and GPs to gather information or share Safeguarding concerns.
- We use social media to raise awareness of safeguarding practices with internal and external stakeholders
- We deliver comprehensive training to our staff on how to identify and support victims of human trafficking
- We are working collaboratively with local providers and our safeguarding board to coordinate our efforts and create a network of support
coming soon
The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is fully committed to ensuring that there is no modern slavery or human trafficking within any part of our business or our supply chains. As a healthcare provider, we are dedicated to promoting human rights and protecting vulnerable people, both within the communities we serve and throughout our procurement processes. We take a zero-tolerance approach to modern slavery and expect all those connected with our Trust, including suppliers and partners, to share this commitment.
You can read our full statement here:
- We confirm the identities of all new employees and their right to work in the United Kingdom
- Our Freedom to Speak Up Guardian, Contact Officers, and Grievance Policies additionally provide a platform for our employees to raise concerns about poor working practices.
- We use social media to raise awareness of safeguarding practices with internal and external stakeholders
- We deliver comprehensive training to our staff on how to identify and support victims of human trafficking
- We are working collaboratively with local providers and our safeguarding board to coordinate our efforts and create a network of support
It is a mandatory requirement that all staff at the Trust attend safeguarding training relevant to their role and responsibilities. Currently, all staff have been assigned a level from 1 to 4 to ensure they receive the appropriate training to meet competencies for the job in accordance with the roles and competencies for healthcare staff – Intercollegiate Documents. Training for all staff is maintained and monthly reports are provided to the Trust Board.
Safeguarding guides
Information to support you and your family
Please note the below links will take you to another website.
Child Exploitation - Birmingham Safeguarding Children Partnership (lscpbirmingham.org.uk)
Early Help - Birmingham Safeguarding Children Partnership (lscpbirmingham.org.uk)
Home - Women's Aid (womensaid.org.uk)
Karma Nirvana: working to end Honour Based Abuse in the UK
Galop - the LGBT+ anti-abuse charity