Safeguarding policies for adults?

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I’m looking for safeguarding policies for adults! We don’t work with children (for the most part) but our funders require us to have a safeguarding policy so I’d love to see any rad policies that aren’t aimed specifically at children / young people. Especially interested to see any abolitionist safeguarding approaches (how to handle serious concerns without involving the police), and ways of distributing safeguarding responsibility so it’s a shared task rather than having one appointed safeguarding person. Any leads much appreciated!

My organisation focuses on arts and culture in the service of racial justice, we publish print magazines and online storytelling and curate live immersive events. We have a flat structure (for the moment, trying to change that!) and 7 part-time staff (including long-term freelancers). Our annual turnover is 50-100k.

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Thanks for posting @Georgie! Welcome to the forum!

This is such a tricky area! The blurry lines between what the law says you have to do on safeguarding (taking steps to ensure safety of ‘vulnerable’ people), compared to the standard practices around what that means (ie- calling the cops or social services on folks), are tough to unpack from each other! In terms of the thinking around this, the Radical Safeguarding guide (by Maslaha and Transforming Together), while focused on young people - might still offer some useful framings and language?

I also imagine that @pero might have some interesting insights around how this has been done in mixed community settings where the risks of calling authorities are really high for many people in the group?

Will drop a line to a couple of other folks who might have some interesting insights, but aren’t in the forum yet!

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Thanks Liam! I am working my way through the (excellent) Radical Safeguarding workbook and it is indeed useful. If anyone comes back to you with further resources or ideas, please pass them on!

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Hi Georgie,

I’ve just uploaded a Safeguarding policy from PIRC that I know is mainly for adults and was informed by Maslaha’s amazing guide, and a lot of experience of a few staff involved in its creation…

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Amazing, thanks Rich!

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Was also wondering if @Lita might have any insights on this? Heard you might be working on some similar stuff?