Domestic Abuse Bill — House of Lords, 2021-02-10
Topic: Social Welfare
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, it is a great pleasure to put my name to the noble Baroness’s amendments. She has been such a tireless campaigner for older people over many decades, and she has pinpointed a very important issue in her amendments. The aim of the first amendment in the group is to create a duty on local authorities to report suspected abuse, such that the local authority must ensure that, where any of its employees suspects in the course of carrying out a financial assessment for adult social care that a person is the victim of domestic abuse, the employee must report that suspected abuse to a relevant social worker or the police As Hourglass has pointed out, we know that the manifestations of abuse are often multiple and interacting. Financial abuse has typically been the most common abuse reported to the helpline—40% of calls in 2019. This rarely occurs without corresponding physical and/or psychological abuse. The financial assessment referred to in the amendment is a vital access point where abuse can be identified. The amendment could reinforce existing safeguards practised by the local authority and the duties of care detailed in the Care Act 2014. For older people, for whom domestic abuse is often viewed solely through a health and social care lens, the measure could join up the delivery of justice to survivors The second amendment in the group concerns the ability of social workers to gain entry for the purposes of identifying and supporting victims of domestic abuse. We know from a King’s College social care workforce research unit report in 2017 that, in current safeguarding practice in England, access to an adult at risk can be obstructed by a third party. This is referred to by King’s College as "hindering". The study focused on those situations in respect of adults who are thought to have decision-making capacity because there are powers permitting professionals to access a person lacking a decision-making capacity. The study was also concerned with cases where professionals are unaware of the capacity of the adult at risk because of problems in gaining access Why then are third parties being obstructive? Practitioner interviews identified an array of scenarios. Sometimes family members were being arguably overprotective, often in cases involving an adult at risk with learning disabilities. Some third parties were thought to be fearful that the social worker would disrupt an established relationship While complex hinder situations appear to be rare, practitioners report that they are usually resolved by good social work and multiagency working. Social workers appeared to be creative in their approaches to gaining access to the adult at risk, but in a small number of cases, gaining any access can prove to be very difficult and sometimes impossible. Such cases take up an awful lot of time and resource, and may mean that adults at risk suffer abuse or neglect for long periods. In such cases, many social workers support the introduction of a power of entry and some of the other powers available in Scotland, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, refers This sets a very helpful context to the two amendments and I hope that the Government will prove to be sympathetic.