Safeguarding In Health And Social Care Essay

Health and social care professionals encounter a diverse amount of individuals who have different needs and preferences regarding their health. As professionals they must ensure that all services users, whether it is older people with dementia, an infant with physical disabilities or an adult with an eating disorder (National Minimum Data Set for Social Care, [no date]), are treated in a way that will successfully meet such needs. In fact, health and social care professionals have a ‘duty of care’ towards services users, as well as other workers, in which they must legally promote the wellbeing of individuals and protect them against harm, abuse and injury. (The Care Certificate Workbook Standard 3, [no date]) Duty of care is a legal requirement

Safeguarding may be described as ‘protecting people’s health, wellbeing and human rights, and enabling them to live free from harm, abuse and neglect.’ (Care Quality Commission, c2018) Safeguarding is relevant to service users because it ensures that they will receive essential and effective treatment by having their needs valued. Safeguarding ‘recognises that an individual’s unique needs, preferences and views must be the focus of all care and support that is planned for and provided.’ (Peteiro et al, 2017: pg. 44) For service users, this means that their personal needs will be prioritised within a health or social care setting and their views and opinions- about their health- will be genuinely considered resulting in them receiving treatment that will be best beneficial for them. Moreover, safeguarding intends to protect service users from harm, neglect, and abuse whenever they are in a health and social care setting. This may be done by making sure all services are accessible to those with disabilities, perhaps individuals who are wheelchair bound, or by making sure all long-term or overnight patients receive the appropriate amount of

Legislations are laws derived from current government policies and outlines rules and principles that everybody must follow. (Peteiro et al, 2017) There are multiple, current, legalisation that have been created in regards to the safeguarding of children and adults. The Data Protection Act of 1998, for instance, was created as a way to control how organisations use personal information. In a health and social care setting, the Data protection act ensures that personal information about individuals will be kept confidential and not misused. The act gives service users the right to determine how their personal data is used and who it is used by to prevent the risk of the information not being private and being put at risk for abuse. (Peteiro et al, 2017) This includes things such as date of birth, national insurance number and medical history. If certain personal information is not protected, then it puts the individual at risk of harm, or abuse. The Data Protection Act safeguards individuals against this. Similarly, The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 safeguards against children and adults by ensuring that only appropriate persons are allowed to work with certain groups. This act created the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) who deal with criminal record checks and overlooks the Barred Children’s and Barred Adult’s Lists of unsuitable