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Systematic Narrative Review
'Should I refer this to safeguarding?'
Recognising and Responding to
Adult Safeguarding within Long Term
Care Homes. Does Education and
Training make a Difference?
Abstract
Context
Elder abuse, mistreatment and neglect presents as an ongoing issue within the
long term care home sector for adults. How effective we are at dealing with this
depends on the skills, knowledge, values and expertise of professionals and
carers. Recognising and responding to elder abuse is key if we are to address
adult safeguarding effectively. This systematic narrative review will examine a
number of different education and training programmes that have been
delivered to professionals and carers. The review will examine how the training
programmes have been evaluated by participants and whether this has made a
difference to practice.
Methods employed in the review
A total of 233 possible articles were detected from a database search of
Cinahl;
Scopus;
Social Care Online; and
PsycINFO.
Along with a citation search. The database searches all took place between
February and March 2021. A review of the abstracts and picking out duplicates
then reduced the number of articles selected down to a total of 15 relevant hits.
Articles were selected that specifically addressed adult and/or elder abuse,
mistreatment, neglect, reporting abuse and long term care home placements.
As the review was examining the role of education and training then it was
important also to limit the search to articles that focussed on training and
educating staff on the topic of adult safeguarding. Searches were limited to
peer reviewed articles published within the last 20 years.
Findings
Overall it was found that adult safeguarding education and training has been
delivered in a range of styles that includes classroom based, small group
discussion, online self-directed resources and a combination of all of these
referred to as blended learning. The difference that education and training
makes is to improve the confidence in the worker to feel able to recognise
safeguarding and to have the skills to respond appropriately using relevant
reporting processes. Other findings include the need to be clear about a
definition of adult abuse and also to address staff values. Finally, there was a
need to provide regular review of the training and an evaluation to ensure the