Safeguarding Declaration

Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is committed to ensuring that all of our patients and their families are cared for in a safe, secure and caring environment.

Our ethos is that Safeguarding is ‘Core Business’ and the protection of vulnerable children and adults at risk from abuse and neglect is embedded within all services provided by the Trust, across all our community services and hospital sites.

A number of safeguarding vulnerable people arrangements are in place, in line with legislation, best practice and local commissioning arrangements, which are detailed as follows:

• The Trust is compliant with statutory responsibilities, national and local guidance. The Trust delivers the safeguarding standards as defined by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), Children's Act Section 11 arrangements, the Devon Child and Family Partnership (DCFP) and the Torbay and Devon Safeguarding Adult Partnership requirements. Evidence of compliance is reported quarterly and annually.
• The Trust has clear lines of safeguarding accountability in place, which are accessible and promoted to staff. The Chief Nurse is the Executive Lead for Safeguarding and chairs the Integrated Safeguarding Committee. The Trust has Safeguarding Leads, Named Professionals, safeguarding and Mental Capacity Act (MCA) specialists in place who lead on safeguarding and MCA issues, acting on behalf of the Executive Lead for Safeguarding.
• The Trust Board reviews safeguarding across the organisation through quarterly reports to the quality governance subcommittee of the Board.
• There are robust safeguarding work plans and audit plans to ensure that safeguarding systems and processes are working effectively.
• Staff are trained to a level appropriate to their role and responsibilities, based on the intercollegiate documents for adults and children and Working Together 2018.
• Safeguarding policies and procedures are in place in line with national and local guidance, and reviewed on a regular basis. This includes safe recruitment policies which are in line with the statutory requirements to carry out Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks. Safeguarding information is available to staff through a dedicated intranet site.
• The Trust has a robust process in place to follow up children who miss hospital appointments, to ensure their health is not affected in any way.
• Processes are in place for the management of allegations against staff including the availability of a Trust Allegations Officer, in line with statutory guidance. The Safeguarding Lead works closely with the allegations officer and in partnership with the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO), Police and Local Authority supporting any investigation process. Staff are encouraged to raise any concerns.
• All staff have access to Safeguarding Supervision or reflective practice appropriate to their role and responsibilities.
• The Trust contributes to National and Local Child Safeguarding Practice Reviews, Safeguarding Adults Reviews, Domestic Homicide Reviews and other multi agency reviews; developing action plans and monitoring their implementation through the Safeguarding Operational groups.
• Staff are fully engaged in multi-agency working, including information sharing to effectively safeguard. This includes a system for flagging children who are subject to a Child Protection Plan and the implementation of the national Child Protection Information Sharing System (CP-IS) in unscheduled care settings.
• We are compliant and active members of the South West PREVENT Partnership meeting the requirements of the Counter Terrorism and Security Act (2015), Modern Slavery Partnership (Modern Slavery Act, 2015) and the Community Safety Partnership.
• Victims and survivors of domestic abuse are asked ‘route questions’ and there is a Health Independent Domestic Violence Advocate (IDVA) available to support patients and staff on each Acute Hospital site.

April 2022