D1 Safeguarding is the act of protecting and preventing all individuals (especially vulnerable adults and children) from suffering from all types of abuse, harm and neglect. Vulnerable adults is the term to define an adult who struggles to take care of themselves without support due to several factors. Some factors include a mental or physical disability, age, circumstances and financial issues. This increases the risk of a vulnerable adult and child being taken advantage of, exploited, abused or neglected as these individuals can be more isolated than others meaning they have less people checking up on their wellbeing and have very little way to report any maltreatment. As well as this, those vulnerable adults or children who may not understand …show more content…
The duty of care is a key issue within safeguarding as it sets a legal duty on all healthcare practitioners to provide care that is not only in the safest most effective way possible but that it is always person-centred and is in the best interest of that specific individual accessing the service. Within safeguarding, there are eight different key issues provided by legislation that apply, there are six for safeguarding adults and two for safeguarding children. It is extremely important to maintain these key issues: humans have the right to be protected from maltreatment. To support this, it is said that “living a life that is free from harm and abuse is a fundamental human right and an essential requirement for health and well-being” (NHS, 2023). This means that all health and social care professionals are legally obliged to follow all principles in order to provide the highest quality of care and support. The six aspects to safeguarding adults are: empowerment, protection, prevention, proportionality, partnership and accountability. Empowerment means granting the adult the power to make their own decisions and choices to maintain independence without feeling