Self-Neglect Policies, Procedures and Documents from Safeguarding Adults Boards in England: Index

Local Safeguarding Adults Boards (SABs) in England are required to coordinate and ensure the effectiveness of safeguarding work by their health, social care, police and other partner organisations. Self-neglect is an important aspect of safeguarding. Publicly-available SAB policies, procedures, guidance and related documents on self-neglect were identified from the SAB websites and analysed between October 2021 and June 2022, in order to map what approaches are being taken across England. Key information was extracted from the documents, regarding: title, year of publication and length definition(s) of self-neglect given any discussion of executive capacity discussion of intersection with other forms of safeguarding any advice on when self-neglect should be treated as a safeguarding inquiry and when not guidance on multi-agency coordination any advice on refusal of service input potentially useful tools or theories in the content. Relevant extracts from the documents were copied into a spreadsheet and subjected to framework analysis (Gale et al. 2013). Frequency counts and framework analysis of themes were undertaken. The data extracts are not reproduced here due to copyright restrictions, but summary coding can be viewed. This review was funded by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Health Services & Delivery Research Programme (NIHR133885). The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.