Safeguarding adults: Safeguarding adults means protecting an adult’s right to live in safety, free from abuse and neglect, and under the Care Act 2014 it is a duty shared between providers, local authorities and the police.
For a registered provider it is both a regulatory requirement under Regulation 13 and a practical system: recognising abuse, reporting it, cooperating with enquiries, and learning from what happened.
The categories include physical, sexual, psychological, financial and discriminatory abuse, neglect and acts of omission, organisational abuse, domestic abuse, modern slavery and self-neglect. Organisational abuse is the one providers most often overlook, because it describes the harm a service can do through its own routines and culture rather than through a single act.
A safeguarding referral to the local authority does not replace a statutory notification to CQC, and neither replaces the duty of candour to the person affected. The same incident can require all three.