
Safeguarding Adults Week 2024 took place from Monday 18 to Friday 22 November.
Every year, Safeguarding Adults Week provides a time for organisations to come together to raise awareness of important safeguarding issues.
The core theme for the 2024 week was Working in Partnership. Effective partnerships allow us to share our knowledge of safeguarding, learn from others and ultimately create safer cultures.
As ever, during Safeguarding Adults Week 2024 we focused on a different safeguarding theme each day. The themes were designed to encourage individuals and organisations to consider the various different ways we can work together to establish safer cultures within our workplaces and communities:
- Monday – Look, Listen, Ask – Developing Professional Curiosity
- Tuesday – Working in partnership: How to work effectively with the people you support
- Wednesday – Establishing Professional Boundaries
- Thursday – Recognising exploitation: The ladder of criminality
- Friday – Professional and Organisational Learning
Safeguarding Adults Week Events
We hosted numerous online events throughout the week, all of which were free to attend and booked to capacity!
Monday 18 November – Ann Craft Trust AGM & Safeguarding Seminar – Sense on Understanding Consent and Choice.
During the AGM, we launched our annual report and put out a call for new trustees. Following the AGM, we were joined by Steve Kiekopf and Tracy Girling from Sense, who led a seminar on Understanding Consent and Choice.
Tuesday 19 November – Camphill Village Trust & The Voice of Lived Experience.
Co-production team members from Camphill Village Trust discussed how they draw from the lived experience of the people they support to develop safeguarding best practice.
Tuesday 19 November – Understanding Professional Boundaries.
In this session we explored what professional boundaries are, and how they might apply to your work. We also discussed the benefits and challenges that professional boundaries can bring, along with the impact of not having clear boundaries in place.
Thursday 21 November – Understanding County Lines.
The seminar explored signs and symptoms of County Lines activity, while providing an overview of the County Lines picture locally and nationally. We also discussed how your organisation can help tackle exploitation in your community.
Thursday 21 November – Evidencing Links Between Cognitive Impairment & Exploitation.
This free online webinar discussed the findings of a Nuffield Foundation Research Project focused on the links between cognitive impairment and exploitation.
Friday 22 November – Mental Health and Wellbeing in Sport With Sport Wales.
We discussed how we can create environments in our sport that will help participants avoid distress and poor mental health in the first place. We also looked at how building better relationships can help us respond more effectively to incidents, so we can offer the support people need, when they need it.
In the coming weeks, we’ll be uploading recordings of summaries of as many of these sessions as we can. We can also send slides and presentations, on request.
Working in Partnership – The Ann Craft Trust Safeguarding Adults Conference 2024
Taking place in Nottingham on Wednesday 20 November, our conference featured a selection of informative keynotes and workshops all focused on the vital importance of working in partnership.
The conference featured:
- Safe Lives, Good Lives, a keynote speech from Gary Bourlet of Learning Disability England and Mark Brookes from Dimensions, on how we can work in partnership with people with lived experience.
- Gang Awareness and Criminalisation, with Anna Smith, Catch 22.
- Harm In & Outside The Workplace – when to make a referral, with Lizzie Whittington, DBS
- Prevention and responding to situations of abuse and harm: Why partnership working is essential in sport and physical activity. Delivered by The Ann Craft Trust’s Safeguarding Adults in Sport Team with a panel featuring Katy Downing, Scott MacKechnie, and Vickie Merrick.
- Safeguarding Adults in Faith Organisations, with Reverend Tom Wilson.
- Exploitation of People with Cognitive Impairments, with Dr Alison Gardner, University of Nottingham, Lisa Curtis, Ann Craft Trust, and representatives from CASBA.
Our Dementia Choir closed the conference, with a rousing performance that had us all singing, dancing, and clapping our hands. Nothing brings us together quite like music!
Stand By Me, by @OurDemChoir at the annual #Safeguarding Adults Conference in Nottingham. pic.twitter.com/0QVihBtKlM
— anncrafttrust (@AnnCraftTrust) November 20, 2024
In the coming weeks, we’ll be uploading summaries of as many of these workshops as we can. We can also send slides and presentations, on request.
A Week of Activity
Individuals and organisations across the UK took to social media to discuss key safeguarding issues, and to show their support for Safeguarding Adults Week.
This year, we asked people to Go Green For Safeguarding Adults Week. We invited people to wear green clothes, to cook and eat green food, and to light up their buildings green. Why? To give people the green light to talk about safeguarding!
It was great to see so many take part in this. And it seems that large parts of Carlisle were lit up green throughout the week!
West Bromwich Albion also showed their support for the week:
Here are some further examples of the activity taking place throughout the week:
Thank You For Supporting Safeguarding Adults Week!
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.
Safeguarding Adults Week 2025 will take place 17 – 21 November. Our annual Safeguarding Conference will take place in Nottingham on Wednesday 19 November. We will announce the venue early next year.
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!