Introduction

I qualified to be a social worker in England in 1998. During my time in training, nobody used the term ‘adult safeguarding’. The concept, as it is understood now, did not exist. This situation is very different from where we find ourselves today. Adult safeguarding is now seen as a central part of social work practice in England. The Care Act 2014 sets out the legal duties of local authorities, and social workers are often acutely aware of the law and policy. Adult safeguarding training is a core part of the social work curriculum. Also, there is increased public understanding of adult abuse and neglect (Yoeli et al, 2016). In the present day, it can be hard to understand why adult safeguarding was not seen as important for so long. And the ever-rising rate of adult safeguarding referrals and enquiries seems to attest to the fact that it is a problem of some scale (NHS Digital, 2022). This raises the question of how we got here and how safeguarding came to be understood in its current form.

In this chapter, I consider how adult safeguarding has come to be viewed as an issue needing a policy response. Adult safeguarding or adult protection systems have evolved in several countries, including England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Canada and Australia (Donnelly et al, 2017) although here I limit myself to an analysis of the situation in England. While others have examined how adult safeguarding policy has evolved in relation to care homes and hospitals (Manthorpe and Stevens, 2015), my analysis is broader in range, focusing on all aspects of adult safeguarding. I begin by setting out a history which highlights how policy has developed, identifying campaigns, public inquiries, political discussion and policy developments from the 1960s to the Care Act 2014 and beyond.

Abuse and neglect exist in all societies and are sometimes referred to as being ‘as old as time itself ‘. However, as Blumer (1971) states, some harms are identified as social problems, while others are not. Because of this, we need to understand how particular issues within society come to be seen as problems in need of policy response. In this chapter, I adopt what is known as a social constructionist position, meaning that I focus on how meaning and knowledge about adult safeguarding have evolved.