Care home safeguarding pilot in Devon hailed a success

A new specialist adult safeguarding nursing service to investigate and support care homes in Devon has been hailed a success for immediate and long term patient safety.
 
The service was trialled in North, East and Mid Devon from October 2013 to March 2014 with dedicated safeguarding nurses to investigate safeguarding alerts or issues and support care homes with education and guidance to improve care standards and reduce the risk of alerts in the future.

In East and Mid Devon – nurses Amanda Sampson and Caroline Holt worked as part of the Devon County Council adult safeguarding team. They conducted clinically robust investigations and any recommendations they made to improve care were followed up and monitored to ensure best practice was maintained.

In the North Devon communities of Barnstaple, Lynton, Ilfracombe and South Molton – nurse Sarah Winfield-Davies took a pro-active and preventative approach to support care homes to reduce safeguarding alerts. She also had direct access into residential care homes as part of the annual review visits and was able in a supportive way to challenge whether the environment, care and documentation was appropriate and to an acceptable standard.

Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust which employed the nurses and Community Nurse Manager Michele Baxendale-Nichols wants to extend this service to cover the whole of eastern and northern Devon.

Stella Doble, Deputy Assistant Director of Health and Social Care at Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust/ Devon County Council, said: “The role of the Safeguarding Nurses has been able to demonstrate improved outcomes and the ability to deliver robust safeguarding investigations, interventions and advice to support and improve care within care homes.

“The service highlights the benefits of providing a service that combines support for the safeguarding process and the responsive and investigatory role of the safeguarding nurses with the advice and preventative work to improve quality and reduce the number of safeguarding alerts.”

Martin Cordy, safeguarding adults lead officer for Northern, Eastern and Western Devon Clinical Commissioning Group, said: Over the past few years there has been increased awareness of adult safeguarding, both locally and nationally.

“We welcome and support this excellent work by Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust and Devon County Council to improve patient safety and invest in education and promotion of high standards of care for individual service users within Devon.”