Ideally suited to those employed within a Local Authority’s Integrated Safeguarding Adults team and having responsibility for investigating adult abuse allegations.
We focus here on the activities required to manage all referrals to a conclusion. This is an in-depth two-day course that will provide your staff with the skills and confidence to investigate adult abuse referrals, culminating in the production of a user- friendly checklist or investigation tool.
Learning Outcomes:
Identifying and securing evidence
- Awareness of current legislation, relevant criminal offences, and Police Emergency powers to protect adults at risk e.g., Wilful ill-treatment and neglect of adults without capacity
- Understand and apply the key concepts of evidence, lawful possession and storage
- Increase confidence in and understand the collating of evidence to support witness statements
Planning investigations
- Knowledge and skills on sharing information and multi-agency working
- Identify the 5 steps to conducting an investigation and how these steps will ensure a thorough professional investigation is conducted.
- Proficiently plan and carry out an ongoing enquiry
- Provide a clear evidence trail in gathering, securing, and storing evidence, interviewing of witnesses.
- Developing skills and understanding in the context of an organic and safe investigative decision-making process (who, when, why, what)
- Issues around being sensitive to service users’ needs within the investigative process
- Building participants’ confidence in challenging and working with external providers and key stakeholders
Interviewing skills
- Specialist interview of vulnerable witnesses
- Skills in creating a safe environment for speaking/ interviewing including the use of questioning styles
- Recognise the relevant questioning techniques which can be used to maximise the information being received and how to question an individual ensuring open questions and the funnelling technique are used appropriately.
- Effectively plan and prepare for different types of interviews and how to structure an interview with relevant questions (including no comment interviews)
- Facilitation to allow delegates to explore for themselves issues of challenging others whilst working with complex information
- Gaining theoretical knowledge and practical skills in solution-focused practice to increase confidence when conducting interviews
- Learning how to recap and rephrase evidential points
Investigation findings
- The importance of evidence (balance of probabilities) in final reports
- Describe some of the key points to consider when evaluating evidence linking
- Produce a written report for the outcome meeting
- The creation of a user-friendly investigative tool for participants to utilise in the workplace
Additional Learning Outcomes:
- Identify personal and organisational barriers to effective practice
- Develop an action plan to apply learning to professional practice.