Safeguarding Adults and Children Statement

NHS Surrey Heartlands is committed to safeguarding the welfare of children, young people and adults across the organisation. The welfare of our population who come into contact with the services we commission, either directly or indirectly is paramount and all our staff have a responsibility to ensure that practice is robust and complies with statutory requirements. By working closely with the other organisations within Surrey we expect that all of the services commissioned deliver good quality, safe effective care.

Organisational arrangements

NHS Integrated Care Boards (ICB) have a statutory responsibility to make sure that the organisations they commission services from have arrangements in place to effectively safeguard children and adults at risk of abuse and neglect.

NHS Surrey Heartlands is the host ICB for safeguarding children and adults including looked after children arrangements and Child Death Review across Surrey. We have a clear line of accountability for safeguarding within the ICB.

The Surrey Heartlands ICS Chief Executive has ultimate accountability for ensuring that the health contribution to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and adults is discharged effectively across the whole health economy through commissioning arrangements.

The Surrey Heartlands ICS Director of Multi-Professional Leadership and the Chief Nursing Officer NHS Surrey Heartlands executive lead for safeguarding and has responsibility for providing leadership and gaining assurance in relation to safeguarding issues within the ICB and across the system.

NHS Surrey Heartlands employs the expertise of Designated Professionals for both children, adults, looked after children and child death review through collaborative arrangements. These roles are an integral part of the ICB and ICS activity and support the delivery of the safeguarding adults, children’s, Looked after children and child death review agenda.

The collaboration between the NHS Surrey Heartlands and NHS Frimley ensures that all organisations commissioned or contracted to provide services will in the discharge of their functions, have regard to the requirements contained within statutory guidance Working Together to Safeguard Children 2018 the Care Act 2014 as well as Policy and Guidance set out by the Surrey Safeguarding Adults Board and the Surrey Safeguarding Children Partnership.

The following measures ensure that safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and adults at risk of abuse or neglect are given priority and are discharged effectively across the whole local health community through commissioning arrangements:

  • Systems to train staff to the appropriate level to recognise and report safeguarding issues.
  • A clear line of accountability for safeguarding; reflected in our governance arrangements.
  • Systems in place to ensure that providers of services are held to account through regular review of safeguarding arrangements through quality scrutiny processes.
  • Arrangements to work with local authorities and other partners through our Local Safeguarding Children Partnerships, Local Safeguarding Adults Boards and Health and Wellbeing Boards.
  • Arrangements to share information between service providers, agencies and commissioners.
  • A clear statement of ICB/ICS responsibilities for staff and ensuring that safeguarding children and adults strategies and associated policies are in place, including safe recruitment of staff, a whistle-blowing policy and safeguarding training and supervision policies which ensure staff exercise vigilance to mitigate against the risk that people using ICB services might be suffering from abuse.
  • The safeguarding team has a Designated doctor and nurses who are responsible for safeguarding children, adults and looked after children, Designated Nurse Child Death Review, Named Nurse and Specialist Nurses for Child Death Review, Designated GP for Safeguarding Adults and Children, Named GP for Safeguarding Children, Safeguarding Adults and Children Nurse Advisors, Child Wellbeing Professional, Safeguarding Transition Advisor and Safeguarding Business support

We closely monitor how effective our safeguarding arrangements for children and adults at risk, through governance and quality assurance processes. In turn, NHS England oversees those processes to make sure all ICBs are meeting their safeguarding responsibilities.