It is a busy time for Adult Support and Protection (ASP) on both national and local levels. Referrals for adults at risk of harm are increasing annually, and we continue to see the understanding of and interest in Adult Support and Protection increasing year on year. The Adult Protection Committee (APC) are keen to hear about all the good work that is going on in North Lanarkshire Council to support adults at risk of harm

Learning and Development

The APC in North Lanarkshire Council have been busy delivering Adult Support and Protection training for a wide range of people.

Our Neglect and Managing Resistance training continues to be well attended, with excellent feedback. Working with people who self-neglect and/or hoard is extremely challenging for all services and requires a trauma-informed approach to practice. It can be a very isolating area of work and we encourage you all to come along to the training. Remember that there is Pan Lanarkshire Guidance to support this work.

Please contact Audrey McGhie mcghieau@northlan.gov.uk to access this and all of our adult protection training, get the timetable and book a place. Our 2024 dates will also be out soon.

The National Adult Support and Protection Coordinator (NASPC) produces a weekly blog to share good practice and the breadth of ASP activity going on across Scotland.

The NASPC is also working alongside Iriss to develop a national Adult Support and Protection Resource Hub. They are looking for good practice and resource tools – basically anything that helps us in our ASP work – to be added to the Hub. There is a short resource submission form for sharing a link. The resource will be launched in early 2024.

Helpful resources to support practice

The Iriss Insight on Shared Decision-Making Publications is available online. Supported decision making aims to protect a person’s ‘legal capacity’, or their right to have their will and preferences upheld in relation to all aspects of their life, regardless of disability or mental health status.

The Adult Support and Protection National Large Scale Investigation Framework was published in June and this will be complemented with national LSI Guidance in 2024.

Work to implement the Revised Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007 Code of Practice is continuing nationally and locally, with national implementation groups focusing on processes, chronologies, self-evaluation and the voice of lived experience. North Lanarkshire has active representation in all of these groups.

The Care Inspectorate published their joint inspection of adult support and protection overview report in August 2023. This provides collation and analysis of the findings of joint inspections in 25 adult protection partnership areas. It also provides an overview of phase two of the national inspection programme.