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Since the introduction of the Care Act 2014, I have been passionate about the impact that good safeguarding practice and prevention can have on people’s ability to live as well as possible with dementia.

At Alzheimer’s & Dementia Support Services (ADSS), we believe that safeguarding isn’t simply a set of policies but also a culture. And in this Safeguarding Adults Week, I am proud to share how we have strengthened our safeguarding culture.

Listening: Creating a Space to Raise Concerns

One of the key building blocks of a safer culture is that everyone within the organisation feels heard, that concerns are welcomed and addressed.
When I started at ADSS over seven years ago, I found a very caring team, but confidence to speak up and raise concerns was limited, knowledge was inconsistent, and support for things like form-filling was lacking.

I set about helping everyone grow in confidence by personally training every team member and delivering safeguarding induction to every new starter. That enabled us to start having open conversations about what safeguarding was, and wasn’t,  and how we all had to play our part in highlighting and preventing abuse for the people we support.

Since that time, we have gone from strength to strength in creating a confident team and a safeguarding culture where colleagues feel they can speak up and get the support they need. As ADSS has grown, we have had to adapt, learn, and evolve to support the seven-fold increase in the number of people we help, along with our expanding team of staff and volunteers.

More recently, we have:

• Established a robust team of Safeguarding Champions across our services, ensuring that colleagues at all levels have a go-to person when concerns arise.
• Appointed a dedicated Trustee with safeguarding oversight, reinforcing that safeguarding sits at the heart of our governance.
• Built strong relationships with our local Safeguarding Adults Board, ensuring that insight from the wider system informs our practice and that our staff know their external partners.
• Invested in training and continual upskilling, so that staff and volunteers feel confident in recognising concerns and reporting them, fostering a culture where “if in doubt, raise it” is not just a slogan but lived.
• Ensured that data collection and reporting processes are transparent, supporting timely responses and feeding learning back to the team so people can see that raising a concern leads to action.

Because when people feel safe to speak up and when that voice is welcomed and taken seriously organisations move away from the “toxic culture” scenario where fears of “nothing happening” or concerns being brushed under the carpet dominate. I knew we were getting things right when Kelly Clark (Head of Community Care and Wellbeing Services) was promoted from Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead to Designated Safeguarding Lead. I had to recognise my student had to become my master as her knowledge and commitment was outgrowing what I could offer.

Learning: Turning Insight into Practice

At our recent training, excellently facilitated by the Ann Craft Trust, we all had reason to pause and reflect on what we have collectively achieved with our safeguarding culture. I was able to truly see that a safer culture is more than doing the right thing once, it is about continuous improvement, reflection, and adapting.

Our commitment to learning is deeply rooted in the values that underpin everything we do at ADSS.

We believe that everyone’s rights and dignity should be promoted; that our approach must always be person-centred and focused on people’s abilities; that we must be inclusive, embracing everyone in our community; that we work together to deliver excellence in the support we provide; that we act with care and compassion in all we do; and that we operate with integrity and honesty at all times.

These values are not just words, but they are the lens through which we view safeguarding. They guide our conversations, our decision-making, and the way we support both the people who use our services and each other.

What This Means in Practice

For the people we support, this means more than just policies, it means being part of an organisation where:

• Their voice matters and is listened to.
• The staff around them are confident and trained to recognise harm, respond appropriately, and keep them safe.
• If something doesn’t feel right, it doesn’t have to wait, it is taken seriously, investigated, and followed up.
• They are supported not just to be safe, but to live the life they want, take part in family and community life, and manage their symptoms.

Our Ongoing Commitment

We recognise that culture is a journey. There will always be new risks emerging, new contexts to learn from, and new improvements to make. We are currently seeing more cases involving people at risk of financial abuse, domestic abuse, and more individuals affected by both dementia and substance misuse.

As the Ann Craft Trust remind us, safeguarding is an ongoing process and not a one-off tick-box exercise.

Moving forward at ADSS, we will continue to:

• Monitor and analyse our safeguarding data, looking for trends not just incidents.
• Create more partnerships and share our learning and knowledge so we can work effectively across the system to better support people affected by dementia.
• Ensure all staff and volunteers receive ongoing training, support, and supervision aligned with our safeguarding values.
• Promote open dialogue and encourage the people we support, their families, carers, and our staff to speak up if they have concerns.
• Review our governance and leadership arrangements regularly, ensuring that safeguarding remains integral to all we do.
• Celebrate good practice and share learning across our services, so that safeguarding becomes embedded in everything rather than treated as a separate module.

So….

During this Safeguarding Adults Week, we at ADSS reaffirm our commitment: to listen, to learn, and to lead in safeguarding. We are building and nurturing a culture where adults at risk are safe, heard, respected, and supported not just protected. Where we actively seek opportunities to prevent harm before it occurs.

We thank every member of our team, our safeguarding champions, trustees, partner agencies, and the people and families we support for being part of this journey. Together, we make ADSS a place where safeguarding is not just a policy, it’s lived, visible, and valued.

By Katie Antill, ADSS CEO