Creating a culture of safe practice

Creating a culture of safe practice QHow do you make sure staff understand the aspects of safeguarding and abuse? AMaking sure staff understand the aspects of safeguarding and abuse is multi-layered. I begin as early as the interview process, informing applicants of our house values, what our goals and objectives are and how we are a service user-led environment. This makes it clear that the service is not about staff being ‘in charge’, as in the old institutional establishments. I instruct new staff members to shadow established staff for their first few shifts, which allows them to see the values of the service, how we communicate with residents and how we work with individual idiosyncrasies. The new staff member will then move on to study the policies and procedures of the service, where we outline abuse and discriminatory practices that will not be tolerated within the service. During their first month of employment, the staff member will complete an accredited online safeguarding training course. We also offer a classroom training session but this can take a little longer to access. Safeguarding includes understanding mental capacity and deprivation of liberty, which can be gained via online training and through knowledge given during the induction period.