Safeguarding Adults Week – Team Member Blog

Have you ever wondered how it would feel to see things from our perspective and perhaps more importantly, have us see things from yours?

Well, it just so happens that a little bit of both may occur this week for an afternoon…. Intrigued? I was.

As part of a general awareness raising initiative, linked to Safeguarding Adults Week we have decided to write and stage and a short play around ‘Safeguarding.’ The piece is about the issues raised and how to address them. Through discussing and writing the piece, we discussed how ‘safeguarding’ can often look, feel and seem different from your perspective than it does from ours. Ours is fairly straight forward; can a concern be identified? Is there a clear path of action to help address or prevent it from re-occurring? Does the individual concerned realise that they are seen as being ‘at risk’ and do they understand the implications?

We decided it could be an interesting exercise in trying to understand the viewpoints of people we support both in these situations and witnessing them occur. Likewise, we felt it could be equally interesting to people we support  to take on the ‘role’ of a support workers for the performance.

Whilst we can never fully understand how it feels to be in someone elses shoes  and what we do can seem contradictory at times to others, the chance to ‘trade places’ for half an hour could help all of us see the different challenges faced by all concerns.

I am currently putting the finishing touches to the script and there will be three parts for people we support who would like to play support workers. No acting experience required; all we are looking for is enthusiasm and a sense of fun, whilst exploring a subject that can often seem more complicated than it first appears.

We hope that we can have a bit of fun and a laugh while we explore this subject – we will let you know how it goes!

In the meantime, if you have any concerns for someone that is supported by us that you feel may be a safeguarding concern, please approach a support worker, any staff member or the named safeguarding officers – their names are displayed in all our services or you can call our main number on 0151 600 3530.

All Safeguarding concerns are treated in confidence.

Thanks for your time, now… If you’ll excuse me a minute… I have a script to finish!

 

Mark Porter –Support Worker