First PAVA Conference

In October PAVA Wales held our first national conference. Pete Morgan was enticed from England to chair the day and our UK President Mervyn to provide the opening address. The audience mostly loved Mervyn, “Excellent; very passionate regarding people and their rights; could have listened to him all day” but not everyone “very assumptive/sweeping statements made” !

The Welsh Assembly are considering whether or not to introduce (by way of a Legislative Competency Order) adult protection legislation. We were delighted to welcome back to Wales Ann Ferguson, the Public Affairs Manager for Age Concern and Help the Aged Scotland. Few have had doubts about the appropriateness of legislation by the time Ann had finished speaking !

Our lead police officer for adult protection in Wales is Detective Superintendent Alan Green who provided insights into developments across the four Welsh forces, those we have had and those we need. Finally, Andrea Giordano who is Service Manager for Adult Protection in Caerphilly Borough introduced the recent Welsh Assembly Guidance on Managing Escalating Concerns about care homes and explained how Caerphilly has already set up effective arrangements for their multi-disciplinary management… which we will all copy.

A particularly successful aspect of the event were the round table discussions (we sat ‘wedding style’) after each speaker. The conference audience were a ‘mixed bag’ which made for excellent debate and the tables set the questions for the final panel – for which most people actually stayed. This and the evaluation forms confirmed that the day had been very successful.

Other News

Adult protection shot up the agenda of the twenty two Welsh local authorities this autumn as Care and Social Services Inspectorate Wales inspections began of adult protection performance. Each local authority is being treated to a three day inspection by some combination of two inspectors from a small pool. We have to wait a few weeks for any individual feedback and then in February we will get the over view report which may shape or alter our future approaches.

In parallel, the University of Glamorgan has undertaken research on the effectiveness of adult protection in Wales and the fitness for current purposes of the 2000 Guidance ‘In Safe Hands’. The report will be with the Minister before Christmas.

The Assembly Adult Protection Project Board will consider these reports and set out recommendations for the future of adult protection in Wales upon which it will consult.
 

We look forward to continuing our work in 2010, compliments of the season from Wales.