About the Safeguarding Adult Board

The role of Salford Safeguarding Adults Board (SSAB) is to ensure that local arrangements for safeguarding adults are effective at protecting those adults in Salford who are considered to be adults at risk.

The SSAB works to promote the wellbeing, security and the safety of adults at risk, recognising their rights, mental capacity and personal responsibility in order to help prevent abuse wherever possible.

Under the Care Act 2014 the SSAB has three core duties:

• develop and publish a strategic plan setting out how it will meet its objectives and how its members and partner agencies will contribute
• publish an annual report detailing how effective its work has been
• commission safeguarding adults reviews (SARs) for any cases which meet the criteria for these (please see supporting documents for criteria and how to make a SAR referral).

In addition the SSAB should evidence its arrangements for peer review and self-audit and evidence how SSAB members have challenged one another and held each other account.

The SSAB works to the safeguarding principles outlined in the Care Act 2014:

• Empowerment
  Presumption of person led decisions and informed consent
• Protection
  Support and representation for those in greatest need
• Prevention
  It is better to take action before harm occurs
• Proportionality
  Proportionate and least intrusive response appropriate to risk presented
• Partnership
  Local solutions through services working with communities. Communities have a part to play in preventing and reporting neglect and abuse.
• Accountability
  Accountability and transparency in delivering safeguarding

Independent Chair - Francine Thorpe

Francine has recently retired from the NHS, her last role was the Director of Quality and Innovation at what is now NHS Greater Manchester Integrated Care (Salford Locality). She has spent all her working life in Salford and for the last few years was the Clinical Commissioning Group’s Executive Lead for safeguarding adults and children. Francine remains committed to improving the safety and quality of services for Salford people and will use her varied NHS experience to support the work of the Board.

Independent Advisor - Dr Stephen Pugh

Before retiring Stephen was the Director of Social Work at the University of Salford.​

He now uses his passion and extensive experience as a qualified social-worker, researcher, lecturer and commentator to advise Salford's safeguarding adult board.

Statutory member agencies

• Greater Manchester Police
• NHS Greater Manchester Integrated Care
• Northern Care Alliance
• Salford City Council

Other member agencies

• Age UK
• Care Quality Commission
• Gaddum
• Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service
• Greater Manchester Mental Health
• Healthwatch Salford
• Mind UK
• National Probation Service
• North West Ambulance Service
• Sodexo
• Salford CVS

Healthwatch is specifically referred to in the Care Act Statutory guidance as a partner who the SSAB must consult with in relation to the strategic plan and the annual report to ensure that the views of the community raising concerns via Healthwatch are heard and reflected in the SSAB’s priorities.

For more information about how the SSAB and Healthwatch will work together, please refer to the joint protocol (PDF).

The board meets four times a year to oversee adult safeguarding arrangements in the city. The SSAB has a 3 year strategic plan identifying priorities for Salford, and an annual action plan that is overseen by the Implementation and Impact network, a sub group of the SSAB.

You can find out more about the work of the SSAB seeing the separate sections on the strategy and action plan, the annual report and minutes of meetings.

You can also see the board's Terms of Reference (PDF)

Authority 

• Sufficiently senior within partner organisation to take decisions on their behalf.
• Have a thorough understanding of abuse and neglect and its impact.
• Have the knowledge and ability to explain their organisations’s priorities, understanding of current risk and mitigation.
• Has the authority to ensure that the work of the SAB is routed through organisational safeguarding governance structures.
• SSAB reps are expected to be appraised of updates from their organisation reps of the subgroups for the SSAB.
• Has the authority to share relevant information with other members of the Board.

Accountability

• Accountable for agreeing actions on behalf of the organisation and and able to evidence their completion.
• Accountable for providing assurance to the SAB on the effectiveness of organisational safeguarding arrangements underpinned with evidence where possible.

Communication

• Willing and able to provide supportive challenge to other partners ensuring that members hold one another to account.
• Have the experience in the work of their organisation and be timely and transparent in sharing of relevant information in terms of issues/challenges faced within their organisation in relation to adult safeguarding; including the outcome of any inspections.
• Ensures that relevant information from the SAB is disseminated appropriately across their organisation.

There are a number of partnership boards in Salford with different roles and responsibilities. More information, including our Interboard Protocol can be found on the Partnerships in Salford webpages.

The Local Government Ombudsman has issued guidance (see Section 3.33) on making complaints against Safeguarding Adults Boards.

Make a complaint

The SSAB maintains a risk register that is reviewed quarterly. The aim of the risk register is to maintain an overview of core risks to the work of the SSAB in meeting its statutory responsibilities.

The SSAB commissioned a Peer Review which took place in April 2019 and was delivered by ADASS Yorkshire and Humber.

2019 Peer Review Report (Word)

The SSAB's Strategy for 2023-26 outlines our achievements over the last 3 years and sets out the board's priorities for the next 3 years.

• SSAB Strategy 2023-26 (PDF)
• SSAB Strategy 2023-26 Easy Read Version (PDF)

Latest annual report

• SSAB Annual Report 2022-23 One Page Summary (PDF)
• SSAB Annual Report 2022-23 (PDF)

The SSAB has a number of sub groups to enable it to carry out its work and achieve the priorities outlined in the strategy and action plan.

Please see the Safegarding Adult Board Structure (PDF) for an overview of the sub groups and reporting structure.

Impact and Implementation Network

This sub group has responsibility for overseeing and implementing the action plan of the board. It is made up of representatives from a range of partner agencies.

The group also forms task and finish groups to conduct set pieces of work such as policy review or addressing a specific area of practice such as self neglect.

Safeguarding Adult Review (SAR) Panel 

It is a statutory function of the SSAB to carry out Safeguarding Adult Reviews (also known as SARs) where certain criteria set out in the Care Act 2014 (s44) is met. It’s a multi-agency panel who consider referrals and determines whether the criteria for a review has been met and whether a mandatory or discretionary review needs to take place. 

The SAR Panel has oversight of all SARs and actions.  SARs published by the SSAB can be found here. 

Safeguarding Effectiveness Group

The purpose of the Safeguarding Effectiveness group is to hold partners to account and gain assurance of the effectiveness of their safeguarding arrangements. The group evaluates the effectiveness of the inter-agency safeguarding processes for Safeguarding adults at risk in Salford.

The group also looks at data on safeguarding notifications to understand the prevalence of abuse and neglect locally. The group has developed a dashboard that is reviewed before each meeting to consider changes in trends of reporting or addressing safeguarding adults issues in Salford.

Strategic Workforce Development Group (Joint group)

Multi-agency training is overseen by a shared sub group across the Adult Safeguarding Board and the Safeguarding Children's Partnership.

Communications Sub-group (Joint group)

This group meets to plan and co-ordinate communications activity on behalf of the partnerships / boards.

Exploitation Sub-group (Joint group)

This sub-groups works together to identify and respond to Exploitation priorities on behalf of the Adult Safeguarding Board, the Safeguarding Children's Partnership and the Community Safety Partnership.

• SSAB - Summary of the minutes - March 2023 (PDF)
• SSAB - Summary of the minutes - June 2023 (PDF)
• SSAB - Summary of the minutes - September 2023 (PDF)
• SSAB - Summary of the minutes - December 2023 (PDF)

Please email: SSAB@salford.gov.uk to request the full minutes.