Safeguarding
Safeguarding means protecting the health, wellbeing and human rights of people and preventing them from being subjected to harm or abuse. We are committed to safeguarding adults and children.
Safeguarding children
Airedale NHS Trust takes its responsibility for safeguarding children extremely seriously and works diligently to ensure it complies with the requirements of the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
All Trust staff who work with or have regular contact with children, for example cleaning and catering staff as well as doctors and nurses, are checked in line with statutory requirements, in accordance with Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).
The Safeguarding Children policies and procedures used by the Trust are monitored and evaluated regularly to ensure they are up to date and robust. This includes systems for following up children who miss outpatient appointments and procedures to enable staff to flag up any concerns about children who attend Accident and Emergency (A&E).
The Trust has a clear training strategy in place which ensures that all staff receive the appropriate level of safeguarding training for their role. The training provided and policies in place ensure that children who may be at risk can be recognised and that staff know the appropriate actions to take once an issue has been identified.
The director of nursing is the board level executive director lead with responsibility for children and safeguarding matters. The director of nursing is responsible for ensuring the auditing of safeguarding arrangements and provides a report to the board of directors to review these on an annual basis.
The Trust has a named doctor and a named nurse who together provide advice, support, training, guidance and supervision regarding the protection and safeguarding of children.
The Trust believes that safeguarding children is everybody’s responsibility.
Safeguarding adults
Safeguarding adults means working together to stop abuse and prevent it from happening in the future. Everyone has the right to live a life that is free from abuse and neglect.
Anyone could be at risk of abuse or neglect. A person may be more or less vulnerable at different times of their life. An adult at risk could be someone who has needs for care and support and as a result is unable to protect themselves from the risk of, or the experience of abuse and neglect.
There are many types of abuse, including:
- Physical abuse – someone being hit, slapped, kicked or restrained inappropriately
- Sexual abuse – someone being made to take part in sexual activity for which they haven’t consented (or are unable to consent)
- Emotional or psychological abuse – someone being shouted at, bullied, made to feel frightened or pressurised
- Financial abuse – stealing, fraud, withholding or misusing someone’s money or possessions
- Neglect/acts of omission – includes not giving someone the care they need
- Modern slavery – human trafficking and forced labour
- Domestic abuse – abuse occurring between family members or close partners
- Discriminatory abuse – poor treatment because of someone age, gender, sexuality, disability, race or religious belief
- Organisational abuse – inflexible routines that suit the organisation, not the individual
- Self-neglect – when someone chooses not to look after themselves and this has a significant impact on their wellbeing
At the Trust, all our staff and volunteers are trained to recognise abuse and respond accordingly, and we work in partnership with other agencies to support people at risk. The Trust’s adult safeguarding policy and processes are based on the Safeguarding Adults Multi-Agency Policy and Procedures for West and North Yorkshire.
Contact our safeguarding teams:
Safeguarding adults: airedale.safeguardingadults@nhs.net 01535 292114
Safeguarding children: airedalesafeguarding.children@nhs.net 01535 292389
If you have a safeguarding concern, please contact one of the following areas:
North Yorkshire 01609 780780
Bradford 01274 431077
East Lancashire 0300 1236721
NHS Safeguarding App for healthcare professionals to increase their awareness and understanding of safeguarding requirements.
Easy read version
For the easy read version of our deprivation of liberty safeguards document click here
National Fraud Initiative
National Fraud Initiative
The Trust has a duty to protect the public funds it administers and as such participates in the National Fraud Initiative. This is an electronic data matching exercise conducted by the Cabinet Office, under statutory powers, for the purposes of preventing and detecting fraudulent and erroneous payments from the public purse. The exercise is run every two years.
The National Fraud Initiative has enabled participating organisations to prevent and detect £245 million fraud and error in the period 1st April 2018 to 4th April 2020. This brings cumulative outcomes since 1996 for NFI participants to £1.93 billion.
The types of frauds and errors previously identified by the NFI in the NHS include:
- NHS employees with no right to work or reside in the UK
- Employees working elsewhere whilst on sick leave
- NHS workers fraudulently claiming housing and council tax benefits
- Overpayment of invoices resulting from the payment of duplicate invoices and credit notes
- Occupational pension payments paid to deceased pensioners several years after their death.
The Cabinet Office’s data matching involves comparing computer records held by one body against other computer records held by the same or another body to see how far they match. This is usually personal information. Computerised data matching allows potentially fraudulent claims and payments to be identified. Where a match is found it may indicate that there is an inconsistency which requires further investigation. No assumption can be made as to whether there is fraud, error or other explanation until an investigation is carried out.
Participation in the data matching exercise assists in the prevention and detection of fraud and involves the provision of particular sets of data to the Cabinet Office for matching for each exercise, and these are set out in the Cabinet Office’s guidance, which can be found at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-fraud-initiative-public-sector-data-requirements
The use of data by the Cabinet Office in a data matching exercise is carried out with statutory authority under Part 6 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. It does not require the consent of the individuals concerned under the General Data Protection Regulations 2018.
Data matching by the Cabinet Office is subject to a Code of Practice. This may be found at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/750372/Code_of_Data_Matching_Practice.pdf
Details of the Cabinet Office’s data deletion schedule can be found here https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/741323/The-NFI-Data-Deletion-Schedule.pdf
For further information on the Cabinet Office’s legal powers and the reasons why it matches particular information see https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-fraud-initiative.
Further details will also be published on the local intranet and in briefings/newsletters. The key contact for the Trust is Nikki Cooper and if you have any queries regarding the exercise she can be contacted by e-mail: nikki.cooper1@nhs.net.
