Kerry Cooke is a Safeguarding Adults Manager with more than 20 years’ experience of working in statutory adult social care at Newcastle City Council.
Kerry was awarded an ARC NENC Practice Fellowship in 2022 to evaluate the effectiveness of Newcastle City Council’s response to supporting and safeguarding adult victims of exploitation. She was supported by ARC NENC researchers at Newcastle University.
In this blog, she shares more details about her research, why it is so important, and what happens next with her findings.
Adults can be targeted by others for the purpose of all forms of exploitation. We know this can have a significant impact on people and their families however there is very little research on what works to be able to support and safeguard adults at risk.
Often adults can be left without the right support and interventions as they may not always appear to fit service criteria. This study explored how in Newcastle we respond to this issue on a multi-agency basis and use safeguarding adult procedures, to determine how effective processes are and identify where there are areas for improvement to ensure better outcomes for people impacted.
Exploitation can take many forms
Exploitation can take many forms and significant risks of abuse can occur. It can have long lasting effects from the trauma people experience. There is no consistent guidance for professionals to recognise, understand the impact of, and intervene in adult exploitation cases.
Often research and guidance focus on children, and fail to cover all forms of exploitation, leading to a systematic invisibility of the issue for adults, particularly those with additional vulnerabilities. Exploitation can include mate crime, controlling and coercive relationships, modern slavery, sexual exploitation, as well as criminal exploitation and home takeovers.
We interviewed adults at risk and their family members, which we connected with through existing networks and via service user and family forums.
We also interviewed practitioners and policy makers from social care and safeguarding teams, housing, neighbourhood, protection teams, public health, voluntary agencies, health, substance misuse services, care providers, police, probation, and social housing.
Alongside this, we analysed 58 case records of closed safeguarding enquiries where exploitation of some form had been a concern.
Issues can be ‘missed’ by professionals
Our findings highlight how adults who experience exploitation struggle to access support, often have co-occurring vulnerabilities that perpetrators target and control, but that can be missed by professionals. This is compounded by heavy workloads, victim blaming attitudes and a lack of appreciation of the impact of coercion and substance use.
There is a widespread assumption that the statutory duty of safeguarding adult procedures and associated legal frameworks is sufficient to protect adults. However, their use is variable nationally. Only in a context where adults at risk, professionals and decision makers have the right knowledge and ethos, can safeguarding adult processes trigger holistic, bespoke and coordinated action to reduce risk.
Our research is the first to show, through thorough data collection and rigorous analysis, the conditions necessary for safeguarding process to be effective.
Making a difference
I hope this work can make a difference by improving knowledge and understanding of the coercion and control used by others – leaving adults experiencing exploitation with little or no choices. I also hope to reduce the stigma and victim blaming that can occur.
I hope it helps professionals at both operational and strategic level to consider the multi-agency responses needed to support those at risk and their families and think of how to work collectively to disrupt the harm and target those responsible.
I also hope it encourages discussions and creativity in thinking of what legislation all agencies have and encourage some consistency in responses nationally – and in our findings we provide suggestions of what is needed to make safeguarding processes effective, and how this can be embedded in practice.
We’ve already shared our findings with senior leaders at Newcastle City Council, and at our Safeguarding Adults Board and sub committees to ensure there is learning across the local authority and with all our partner agencies.
We will also be delivering training on adult exploitation across our workforce.
Find out more
I am delivering a webinar on Tuesday 16 July to share my findings nationally – you can find out more and register using the link below.
Adults at risk of exploitation: Putting the pieces of the jigsaw together – ARC (nihr.ac.uk)
I have also submitted a paper to an academic journal for publication.
Reflections on my fellowship
This ARC Practice Fellowship has given me time to reflect, read and network. I have made some excellent new contacts locally and nationally and have been also able to share my knowledge and views on other pieces of research happening across the UK .
My biggest challenges have been ‘not knowing what I didn’t know’ – such as knowing about computer programmes that can help with data analysis and referencing, as well as writing the paper up within a word count for a journal.
It’s been a brilliant opportunity to experience the world of research, to meet new people and stop and look at what we are doing, and to hear others’ views on what works and doesn’t.
Hearing the views of service users and their family members was powerful. It is excellent to have some research that highlights that our way of working can be successful but also how we can improve our response.
If you’d like to find out more, you can contact Kerry at: kerry.cooke@newcastle.gov.uk