Safeguarding Adults Week 2022 took place Monday 21- Sunday 27 November.
We host this week every year as an opportunity for organisations to come together to raise awareness of important safeguarding issues. Our aim is to start vital conversations and share best practice, so we can all be better together.
Each day of the week we focused on a different safeguarding theme to explore how we might respond to contemporary safeguarding challenges:
- Monday – Exploitation and County Lines
- Tuesday – Self-neglect
- Wednesday – Creating Safer Organisational Cultures
- Thursday – Elder Abuse
- Friday – Domestic Abuse in Tech-Society
- Saturday & Sunday – Safeguarding in Everyday Life
You can learn more about these themes in our short guide here.
Seminars and Events
Throughout the week, we hosted one major event and three online seminars.
On Monday 21 November we combined our AGM with a seminar from Street Teams and CYP First focused on adult self-harming.
This seminar provided a brief introduction to adult self-harming – what is it, and why might an adult choose to self-harm? We then discussed some practical ways that we might support people showing signs of self-harm, including some techniques for holding difficult conversations.
On Thursday 24 November we collaborated with DBS to deliver an online seminar on safe and fair recruitment when working with adults at risk.
This highly instructive session discussed the different levels of DBS checks available, with some guidance on choosing the right check for each role.
On Friday 25 November we hosted a second online seminar. This one explored ways people might use the power their role gives them to create safer cultures in their organisations.
This seminar discussed some common themes we might find in negative or problematic cultures. It also shared some lessons we have learned from safeguarding reviews, before offering some practical advice for anyone who wants to make a difference.
The 2022 Ann Craft Trust Safeguarding Conference
The focus of our week was our annual Safeguarding Conference. This year it took place on Wednesday 23 November in Nottingham, with a special focus on responding to adult exploitation.
The conference opened with a keynote speech from The Suzy Lamplugh Trust, discussing street harassment. Rather than simply raising awareness of the problem, this session instead shared a number of practical ways we might respond to street harassment when we see it. We also received some tips on what we might do if we’re ever ourselves victims of street harassment. The crucial thing is to do whatever it takes to keep up your resilience.
After this keynote speech, delegates could choose from a number of sessions:
- Migrant Help – Responding to Modern Slavery, Exploitation and Trauma
- CYP First – Adult Grooming and Exploitation
- Refuge – Emerging Trends of Technology-Facilitated Domestic Abuse
- The Ann Craft Trust – Power and Exploitation in the Sport and Activity Sector
We plan on publishing short summaries of each of these presentations in the January 2023 edition of our Quarterly Safeguarding Bulletin. If you haven’t already signed up to receive our bulletin, you can subscribe for email updates here.
30 Years of The Ann Craft Trust
2022 is a special year for The Ann Craft Trust, as it marks 30 years since we started as NAPSAC.
We have marked this anniversary in numerous ways throughout the year. But the main event was a charity dinner we held immediately after our annual conference in the middle of Safeguarding Adults Week.
The event included a drinks reception, a three course meal, live jazz from The Kit Mason Trio, and live magic from Professor Todd Landman. We were honoured to welcome some very special guests, including members of our board of trustees, our patron Sir Roger Singleton CBE, and some of Ann Craft’s relatives.
We will share photos, videos, and further reflections on this event, and on our 30th anniversary in general, in the coming weeks.
A Week of Activity in the Wider Safeguarding Community
While we ran our own events, the wider safeguarding community marked Safeguarding Adults Week in a number of ways.
On social media, we asked anyone who wanted to support the week to use the hashtag #SafeguardingAdultsWeek. In this way we could help promote any activity that took place to as wide an audience as possible.
Below is just a small selection of some of the activity that took place across the country.
You can get a bigger picture of the week’s activity by taking a look at the hashtag: #SafeguardingAdultsWeek.
A Massive Thank You
The enthusiastic response to this year’s Safeguarding Adults Week was very encouraging. It demonstrates that people are becoming increasingly aware of these vital issues. But more importantly, it shows just how many people are committed to making a difference.
So no matter what you did to support Safeguarding Adults Week – whether you put on an event or simply shared some resources online – we’d like to say a massive thank you.
We’re already talking about our plans for Safeguarding Adults Week 2023.
We’d love to hear your thoughts. So let us know what sort of themes you’d like us to cover, and what sort of resources you’d like us to produce!