Course overview

The course aims to arm social workers working with difficult to engage adults with the skills to identify what leads to a lack of engagement and to define and recognise difficult to engage behaviour such as ambivalence, avoidance, confrontation, and violence. The course will also explore what is meant by professional curiosity and respectful challenge.

Delegates will consider relevant legislation for intervention to include the Human Rights Act 1998, the Care Act 2014 and the Mental Capacity Act 2005, along with statutory guidance and best practice guidance around Making Safeguarding Personal. Delegates will also explore how the appropriate and timely sharing of information and a multi-agency approach is vital to safeguard adults and professionals where adults are not willing to engage or cooperate directly or indirectly.

Delegates will consider the importance of record keeping and risk assessments with an emphasis on how appropriate evidence is created, collated, and analysed by professionals, which will enable them to arrive at the correct risk assessments and action plans on behalf of the adult. Delegates will also explore how action plans identifying how risks can be managed or reduced for the adult and professionals are integral to working with difficult to engage adults.

The course will discuss the importance of safeguarding supervision, with a consideration of strategies that could be adopted by professionals to aid them in managing   the stress and demands that difficult to engage adults can place upon them, which in turn can  impact the decisions they make. Discussions will explore staff rights and the statutory duties upon managers to provide a safe working environment for their staff.

The course is designed to cover the theory during the morning whilst in the latter part of the day, in smaller groups via breakout rooms, delegates will identify the key learning from reviews and then put into practice what they have learnt by working through a case study. 

Key Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course delegates will be able to:

• Define who are “difficult to engage adults”.
• Explain what leads to a lack of engagement with some adults.
• Describe types of uncooperative behaviour to include ambivalence, avoidance, resistance, intimidation, confrontation and violence.
• Explore what is meant by “professional curiosity”.
• Explore the relevant legal framework from Human Rights through to policy and procedures.
• Prioritise the adult’s needs by applying Making Safeguarding Personal.
• Assess the effectiveness of multi-agency working and sharing of information to safeguard adults and professionals.
• Recognise the importance of creating and collecting factual evidence that builds a holistic picture around the adult.
• Recognise the importance of risk assessments and the production of well-crafted action plans which identify how risks can be managed or reduced.
• Evaluate if there is adequate support and supervision of staff to enable staff to respond appropriately to risky or hostile behaviour.
• Identify the key learning from some of the adult safeguarding reviews.