| 20 November 2025
Safeguarding Adults Week 2025
Prevention starts with people
Safeguarding Adults Week (17–23 November 2025) gives organisations across the UK a vital opportunity to reflect on how well their safeguarding approach works in practice.
While Skills for Health is best known for supporting health and social care providers with statutory safeguarding training, safeguarding responsibilities extend far beyond clinical environments. Every workplace – from education and housing to hospitality, public sector services, charities and customer-facing organisations – must ensure adults at risk are protected from harm.
In England alone, 615,530 adult safeguarding concerns were raised in 2023–24, a 5% rise in just one year. This reinforces a simple truth: although prevention is the foundation of safeguarding, it remains one of the most overlooked elements and strengthening it has become urgent.
Prevention always begins with people – with awareness, vigilance, and the confidence to act when something isn’t right. Because ultimately, you cannot prevent what you don’t recognise.
From compliance to culture: why prevention must be embedded
Many organisations deliver safeguarding training simply because they must; it’s a mandatory exercise driven by regulation rather than by culture. But prevention only becomes meaningful when safeguarding is understood as something lived every day, not simply a compliance exercise logged once a year.
This matters even more as the risk of harm increases. The 2024 Skills and Employment Survey found that 14% of UK workers experienced abuse, bullying or violence in the past year, with nurses (39%) and teachers (31%) among the most affected . Abuse within the workplace is itself a safeguarding concern and highlights gaps in awareness, reporting, and organisational responsibility.
A prevention culture means:
- Staff recognise concerns early
- Managers respond proportionately and consistently
- Safeguarding learning is refreshed regularly
- Leaders make it clear that every team member is accountable
A common misconception is that prevention starts with having a policy. In reality, prevention only works when staff understand what to look for and what to do next. Short, role-relevant learning – such as Skills for Health’s CSTF-aligned Safeguarding Adults modules (Levels 1–3) – turns policy into confident, everyday practice, creating environments where safeguarding becomes instinctive rather than reactive.
What prevention looks like in practice
Effective prevention is not complicated, but it is intentional. Across all workplaces, it means:
- Appointing a Safeguarding Lead to provide governance and oversight
- Recognising signs of abuse or neglect early – from physical indicators to behavioural changes, coercion or control
- Understanding all types of harm, including psychological, financial, digital, discriminatory or organisational abuse
- Creating safe, open cultures where concerns are raised without fear
- Embedding safeguarding across all roles, not just frontline staff
- Refreshing awareness regularly, so knowledge stays current
Safeguarding isn’t just about responding to harm; it’s about creating conditions where harm is less likely to happen in the first place. When prevention is part of everyday practice, concerns are spotted sooner, escalation is reduced, and adults at risk are protected long before issues reach crisis point.
Step 1: Appoint a Safeguarding Lead
A Safeguarding Lead is the anchor of any prevention approach. Their responsibilities include:
- Directing safeguarding strategy
- Overseeing training and compliance
- Maintaining accurate data records
- Ensuring policies and procedures are up to date
- Reporting to senior management and the Board
- Ensuring robust recruitment and vetting
Clear leadership and accountability strengthen organisational safety, support staff at every level, and protects service users.
Step 2: Recognise the signs
The rising number of enquiries under Section 42 of the Care Act 2014 – 176,560 in 2023–24, involving 141,080 individuals – shows that many safeguarding concerns are being identified after harm has occurred, which is too late.
Early recognition allows earlier intervention.
Every staff member should be trained to notice signs such as withdrawal, fearfulness, unexplained injuries, financial discrepancies or patterns of coercive behaviour.
Step 3: Understand the different forms of harm
Abuse is not always visible. It may be:
- Physical
- Psychological
- Financial
- Discriminatory
- Organisational
- Neglect or self-neglect
When staff understand the full spectrum of harm, they are better equipped to identify concerns that might otherwise be overlooked. In fast-paced or public-facing workplaces, this informed vigilance often determines whether a safeguarding issue is escalated early or missed entirely.
Step 4: Create an open, reporting-friendly culture
A safe workplace is one where concerns are raised early and without hesitation. This is especially important in sectors with higher exposure to aggression or difficult behaviour.
The latest Crime Survey for England and Wales recorded 642,000 incidents of work-related violence in 2023–24, including 290,000 assaults and 352,000 threats.
Open reporting cultures help reduce tolerance of harmful behaviours, protect staff wellbeing, and enable managers to respond to risks quickly. Leaders play a central role in establishing this openness and must prioritise building environments where employees feel both empowered and safe to speak up.
Step 5: Embed safeguarding across roles and settings
Safeguarding is a shared responsibility. Everyone – from estates, reception, and catering teams to educators, volunteers, clinical staff, managers and executives – play a role in recognising concerns and responding appropriately.
A tiered training approach ensures clarity on what should be noticed, what should be reported, and how safeguarding applies to each role. When safeguarding is embedded across teams, early identification improves and organisational resilience grows.
Step 6: Refresh awareness regularly
Safeguarding is not a one-time training requirement. Risks evolve, legislation changes, and teams rotate.
Regular refreshers keep safeguarding front of mind, ensuring staff knowledge is up to date, new starters are aligned with best practice, and organisational culture stays robust.
Most safeguarding competencies require updating every 1–3 years. Ongoing training keeps safeguarding visible and relevant – and renewed learning brings renewed confidence.
Safeguarding Leads should maintain clear oversight of training completion, data trends, and areas for improvement.
The role of training in prevention
Skills for Health’s Safeguarding Adults eLearning provides a progressive pathway:
Level 1 – for all staff – covers the basics of safeguarding, recognising concerns, and knowing who to inform.
Level 2 – for staff with direct contact with vulnerable adults – provides a deeper knowledge of how to respond, record, and escalate concerns appropriately.
Level 3 – for safeguarding leads and professionals with enhanced safeguarding responsibilities – looks at case management, supporting teams, and embedding strategic prevention.
Training that focuses on recognition, escalation, communication and action is what makes prevention possible – every day, in every workplace.
Prevention is ongoing
True safeguarding best practice comes from treating prevention as an ongoing commitment rather than a compliance deadline. It is a continuous cycle of awareness, reflection, and improvement, which requires leaders to revisit training regularly, nurture open discussion, and ensure staff know how to respond when something doesn’t look right.
Safeguarding Adults Week is an important reminder that prevention is everyone’s responsibility – and that it should shape daily practice, not be reinforced only in response to incidents or audit pressures.
Take action: make prevention part of your workplace learning
Safeguarding awareness protects adults at risk, supports staff, and creates safer, more resilient workplaces.
Explore Skills for Health’s Safeguarding Adults eLearning (Levels 1–3): role-aligned courses designed to support prevention, early recognition, and confident action.
View courses