Vulnerable Adults: Deaths

(asked on 1st October 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to expand the safeguarding system used to investigate the deaths of vulnerable adults to include everyone who has died while street homeless.


Answered by
Nadine Dorries Portrait
Nadine Dorries
This question was answered on 7th October 2019

The cross-Government Rough Sleeping Strategy, published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in August 2018, sets out the commitments to halve rough sleeping by 2022 and end it by 2027.

The Department of Health and Social Care has committed itself to work with Safeguarding Adult Boards to ensure that Safeguarding Adult Reviews are conducted when an adult who sleeps rough dies or is seriously harmed as a result of abuse or neglect, whether known or suspected, and there is concern that partner agencies could have worked more effectively to protect them. The Care Act Statutory Support Guidance sets out the criteria for carrying out a Safeguarding Adult Review, regardless of whether the adult is homeless or not.

The Department has no imminent plans to extend the safeguarding system to investigate the death of every vulnerable adult who is homeless and dies, but will continue to work with other Government departments to deliver the Rough Sleeping Strategy.

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