Professor Amanda Phelan:

The Deputy's question to Sage Advocacy concerned raising awareness. There are a number of domains in that regard. The beliefs in our society contribute to safeguarding concerns, for example, the idea that next-of-kin have a right to make decisions. There is no legal basis for that. There is also a cultural assumption that families are entitled to money. The Deputy mentioned financial abuse. Someone could think that if he or she is getting money in a will, he or she will take it earlier because he or she does not see that as extortion of money. It is about looking at all of those aspects of how we culturally view safeguarding.

This also needs to be looked at in organisational culture. Many organisations talk about person-centred care. I teach on this topic and no student who has come through this course has said we were doing it right. At the end of the programme, students would say they did not understand it and yet their organisations have lovely mission statements. You must transform people's understanding of person-centred care so that they understand it is a way of thinking, not just something that is lovely on a wall. That is important from an organisational point of view.

The individual needs to know he or she has equal rights, that he or she is not beholden to somebody else and that there are helping organisations that are independent. Professionals have a particular organisational orientation and families have an orientation and biases so somebody who is an independent advocate would support that person to navigate through what he or she authentically wants. They can look at issues such as the variables influencing his or her decisions, whether any undue influence is being placed on him or her, if there are ways of thinking that are aligned to gendered ways of thinking and things like the intersectionality of gender, safeguarding and disability and how that impacts that individual.

Some jurisdictions have developed specific safeguarding for adults at risk. The police service in Toronto has specific safeguarding police officers who work in that domain and have developed expertise. Scotland was the first part of the UK to have adult protection legislation. It has developed ways of operating with adult safeguarding and that knowledge is important because it is not the same as other domains. While there are overlaps with child protection and domestic violence, it is different.

In terms of addressing issues as a whole, what we know from case review after case review in Ireland, where it is more related to child protection, and the adult safeguarding boards in England is there is a continued silo approach with nobody taking a macro perspective and looking at the historical origin and development of cases. Individual aspects happen but nobody is knitting them together and taking an overall view. The UK has followed the idea of creating professional curiosity within safeguarding, which is important in Ireland, and ran a campaign called Making Safeguarding Personal some years ago.

Within the legal system, we need to be able to process these cases because very often, safeguarding is breaking the law but it is not always brought to that domain because of a number of issues. Regarding family members committing safeguarding breaches, there is a love-hate relationship. The person loves the individual but hates what he or she is doing to him or her. Regarding legislation, we also need a gateway - a right of entry if there is suspicion of abuse happening within a home or any environment and a right of assessment of that person and working with that person because the welfare of that individual is paramount, not what everybody else says, and that is what we need to keep at the front of our minds.

We are here as the servant of that person, not as their master.