Update on the National Adult Safeguarding Board

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On the 16 July I chaired the first National Adults Safeguarding Board, created in direct response to Baroness Casey's safeguarding recommendations set out in her letter to the then Secretary of Health and Social Care on 3 March 2026, and her speech at the Nuffield Trust Summit on 5 March 2026.

The Board has been convened because adult safeguarding is not an abstract policy issue—it is about people’s lives, dignity, safety and human rights. For adults at risk of abuse and neglect, effective safeguarding can mean the difference between being unheard and being believed; between living in fear and living with confidence; between harm being hidden and harm being stopped. The Board’s purpose is to ensure government accountability for serious adult safeguarding issues by assuring transparency at a national level, enabling system-wide learning where things have gone wrong, and driving the action needed so that people can live free from abuse and neglect wherever they live.

Pictured: The first National Adult Safeguarding Board meeting

It was a privilege to be in a room with such depth of experience, commitment and shared ambition to strengthen adult safeguarding and drive meaningful change. In opening the meeting, Stephen Kinnock, Minister for Social Care, underlined his clear commitment to the Board, stressing that the importance of keeping vulnerable adults safe cannot be overstated. He has asked to be kept closely briefed on the Board’s progress.

Board membership includes leaders with lived experience, specialist expertise and experience of creating change—the people we need to drive the decisive action required to build robust national oversight of adult safeguarding and reduce risk for those people most likely to experience harm. I would like to thank everyone for their contribution so far and for their ongoing participation. The challenge now is to turn shared concern into visible change: clearer expectations, stronger practice, better escalation, and a system that acts earlier, listens harder and learns faster.

Pictured from left: Lucy Rush, Melanie Williams, Martin Teff, Sarah McClinton and Minister Kinnock

As mentioned in the Letter to Baroness Casey updating her on the progress on adult social care reform recommendations, the board agreed that it should focus on the following initial priorities:

immediately to action an update the Care Act statutory guidance on adult safeguarding to drive better implementation and practice across a wide range of issues, including homelessness, drugs and alcohol, and transitional safeguarding oversee an urgent review of the legal framework for safeguarding to: identify any improvements needed to ensure that the legal framework is robust enough to respond to serious safeguarding risks examine the current mechanism for escalating local safeguarding concerns to national level identify what statutory powers the board might need to operate most effectively work to strengthen national oversight of local Safeguarding Adults Boards and improve the quality of adult safeguarding practice.

Building on the work of Safeguarding Adults Boards, partners, people with lived experience, families and voluntary and community sector colleagues, I will ensure the Board’s role, reach and impact continue to grow. This work must be measured not only in meetings held or guidance updated, but in whether people at risk of abuse and neglect feel safer, are listened to sooner, and can trust that concerns will be acted on. It is about upholding dignity, respect and human rights for people who may be isolated, frightened, dependent on others for care, or unable to advocate for themselves, and it is also a vital reflection of the quality of adult social care itself. 

Adult safeguarding matters to all of us. At any point, we or those close to us may need people to notice, listen and act. We cannot accept a system where serious risks are missed, where lessons are not learned, or where people at risk are left without a strong voice. Every Safeguarding Adult Review tells the story of someone’s child, someone’s sibling or someone’s parent who has died or experienced significant harm because of abuse or neglect. This Board is therefore a call to action: to be more ambitious, more transparent and more relentless in tackling abuse and neglect. Getting this right is essential—and this is our opportunity to deliver lasting and much-needed improvement.

https://socialworkwithadults.blog.gov.uk/2026/06/25/update-on-the-national-adult-safeguarding-board/

seen at 16:40, 25 June in Social work with adults.