At Mersey Care, safeguarding means protecting children, young people, and adults from abuse, neglect, or harm, and acting when there are concerns about someone’s safety or wellbeing.
Safeguarding applies to everyone, but the way it is carried out reflects people’s different needs and circumstances. We safeguard children and adults by working closely with families, carers, communities, and partner organisations, recognising that keeping people safe is a shared responsibility.
Safeguarding children is about protecting babies, children, and young people from harm and promoting their welfare. This includes responding to concerns about abuse, neglect, exploitation, or situations where a child may not be safe or well cared for.
In Mersey Care, safeguarding children includes:
- Listening to children and young people and taking their concerns seriously
- Considering how a child’s family circumstances, relationships, and environment may affect their safety and wellbeing
- Working with parents and carers to offer support wherever possible
- Sharing information and taking action when there are concerns about a child’s safety.
Safeguarding children is not about blame. It is about understanding risk early and working together to help children grow up safe, supported, and healthy.
Safeguarding adults focuses on protecting adults who may be at risk of abuse or neglect because of their care and support needs. This can include older people, people with disabilities, people experiencing mental ill health, or anyone who may be unable to protect themselves from harm.
Safeguarding adults means:
- Supporting people to stay safe while respecting their rights, wishes, and choices
- Recognising signs of abuse, neglect, or exploitation
- Working in a person-centred way, in line with Making Safeguarding Personal
- Acting proportionate to the level of risk, in partnership with other services.
Wherever possible, adults are involved in decisions about their care and safeguarding, unless someone is at immediate risk of serious harm.
Safeguarding cannot be done by one organisation alone. Mersey Care works closely with local authorities, health services, police, education, voluntary organisations, and other partners across all areas we serve.
We share information appropriately, attend multi agency meetings, contribute to reviews and learning, and work together to make sure people receive the right support at the right time. This joined-up approach helps us identify concerns early, reduce risk, and improve outcomes for children, adults, and families.
Local Safeguarding Children Partnerships (LSCPs) are independent statutory partnerships responsible for coordinating and ensuring effective safeguarding arrangements for children in each local authority area.
LSCPs bring together organisations that work with children and families, including health, local authorities, police, education, and voluntary services. Their role includes:
- Making sure organisations work effectively together to safeguard children
- Monitoring and evaluating local safeguarding practice
- Providing advice, guidance, and learning to improve how services protect children
- Reviewing past cases so that lessons are learned and future practice is strengthened
- Offering multi-agency safeguarding training.
Each local area has its own LSCP, with information and training available on local partnership websites.
Safeguarding Adults Boards (SABs) are statutory partnerships established under Section 43 of the Care Act 2014. Each local authority area must have a SAB to lead and coordinate adult safeguarding work.
SABs operate at a strategic level and are responsible for:
- Coordinating how organisations work together to safeguard adults at risk
- Reviewing safeguarding practice and learning from serious cases
- Influencing how adult safeguarding is carried out across health, social care, and other services.
By law, SABs include:
- The local authority
- Integrated Care Boards
- The local police
Other organisations may also be involved depending on local need, including health providers, prisons and probation services, housing, advocacy services, education providers, and regulators such as the Care Quality Commission.