Draft history

Safeguarding in adult social care depends less on knowing the policy than on acting when a situation is ambiguous. On a morning shift in March 2025 I noticed unexplained bruising on the forearm of a person I support who communicates with a small number of signs. The Care Act 2014 places a duty on services to make safeguarding enquiries where abuse or neglect is suspected, and the service policy sets a same-shift reporting standard. My difficulty was not the standard itself but the judgement it required: for roughly ten minutes I weighed whether the marks were significant enough to escalate. I paused personal care, asked open questions rather than leading ones, recorded the marks on a body map and reported to the registered manager before the end of the shift. The reasoning behind reporting on incomplete information is that the threshold for raising a concern is suspicion, not proof; holding the concern while I gathered certainty would have transferred risk onto the person. The subsequent enquiry found that a transfer technique was causing the marks, and the moving and handling plan was revised. Two things follow from this for my practice. The delay, though short, shows that I was applying a proof standard rather than a suspicion standard, which is a misreading of the procedure I could recite accurately. It also suggests a limit in how the policy is taught: written guidance describes what to report but gives little help with recognising the moment a concern has formed. I now treat hesitation itself as the trigger to report.