In Plymouth, the local authority is helping to raise awareness of abuse so
that people can protect themselves.
Here, the emphasis is on preventing abuse by enabling people with care and support
needs to recognise when they're being badly treated and showing them
what to do about it.
Could you be abused at your day service, where you go in the day?
One of the things that's come out is that a lot of people don't know things
they're putting up with are abuse.
So that's probably the biggest learning curve,
people think it's okay for people to shout at them because they've got a
learning disability.
So, where can you be abused?
Anywhere.
Yeah?
[in chorus] Anywhere
As it's turned out,
quite a lot of the people that we train then go back to where they live
or go for day centre and act as champions
so they represent the views of other people who can't speak for themselves.
Based on a staff alerters' course, 'Keep Yourself Safe' has been run since 2009.
The training is co-produced with a paid co-trainer who has learning
disabilities.
What it is is... is um...
if somebody don't come,
that is a neglect and it is a...
it isn't very nice if...
No.
There's some other people what...
you're not...you are not allowed to do.
The reason why I'm here is to talk
about all this and I I feel good in myself to talk about it all.
If someone's not treating you with respect,
all right, and
not giving you choices, or hearing...
What's going on today is a course for people who have
quite severe learning disabilities, which is something that is a challenge, because
you have to make sure that the course is run at a level that people are going to
get the message.
What I'm perfectly happy with is if everyone, by the end of two
days, knows they can say, no, if someone's doing something to them they don't like.
You say, don't touch me, and if they don't
listen to you, Christine, what do you do?
You shh....Stop!
Shout, "stop", brilliant.
This course has now been adapted for others, including
older people, those with physical disability, and substance abusers.
The message is the same, though the delivery can be different.
Where else could you be abused?
When I train people with physical disabilities,
I took that course out to them and said that, would this be any
use to you and they said no.
They actually had their own photos put on there
and acted out the scenarios.
Nowhere by a stranger....
What I've found, in older people's residential homes,
where I'm starting to work, that it's best not to go in and saying you're going to
run a training course because they won't come.
So the way it's started to work is
that I've got two homes that do debates with their service user groups and then,
when I've been along two or three times, we will say, do older people get hurt in
residential and nursing homes, and debate it that way.
You can tell if you want but
you don't have to.
Steven, who would you like to come with you?
But is this course value for money and has it made
significant difference?
I think that we would be looking at this from a dignity
and respect element.
If we are devoting resources to training all sorts of staff
at all sorts of levels across the city,
we should then extend that to service users.
We have seen an increase in alerts from service users themselves, so that
shows me that this is a worthwhile project.
Sometimes, when you mention
physical abuse, someone will say oh so-and-so's did that to me,
then we'll investigate that.
That's quite regular.
We take all alerts seriously.
I'm not going to tell you that we
believe all alerts because, actually, not everything that we
hear is true but we treat all alerts seriously and we investigate to the
point where we can put our hands on our hearts and say,
actually, we can rule out abuse in this case.
The team in Plymouth believes that
the course has given many adults the tools to understand abuse and they want
this type of training to go much further in the city and beyond.
One of the groups we haven't
covered yet are people who are receiving direct payments who are
living in the community, so they're quite at risk
because they're pretty independent.
Um...I think we need to make sure this happens right across the country
and I also think that the more people we train, the less abuse there will be,
because if staff or volunteers go to work with people
who are saying to them,
"these are my rights,"
and if they shout at them, they say,
"don't shout at me, that's abusive,"
then they're less likely to be abused.
[Trainee] Don't!
You say, "stop."