Covers King’s Lynn town and West Norfolk. Links King's Lynn & West Norfolk Borough Council and also part of Breckland (Thetford area). 

Co chairs: Peter and Gemma (social worker).

WLSAP does have regular attendance from a variety of organisations, such as:

• Borough Council of King's Lynn and West Norfolk
• West Norfolk Carers
• Norfolk Community Health & Care
• operational partnership team (police)
• MIND
• Library service
• Daisy programme
• YMCA
• adult social care
• Queen Elizabeth Hospital

2025

In the July meeting, there were positive reflections from members about an increase in multi-agency safeguarding planning meetings, some resulting in really helpful joint visits. 

There was also a 10 minute member briefing from 2 of our Safeguarding Adults Practice Consultant colleagues, including an overview of some of their key responsibilities - these include supporting the St Thomas Training for Making Safeguard Enquiries, providing guidance and support across Norfolk County Council, attending cross-organisational strategy meetings and MDTs and supplying daily contact and support for social workers and Adult Social Services neighbourhood teams. They also meet with teams from private hospitals, conduct risk assessments on cases and share knowledge through reflective sessions. The role of the SAPCs is to promote consistency in decision making, to support to client facing teams, to promote best practice in safeguarding and they help with decision making around safeguarding. 

The topic in July was Exploitation - a variety of links and associated material was shared to support discussion, and various examples emerged within the group, giving us a better understanding and context to the concerns - particularly around cuckooing.

2024

In a meeting that discussed prevention themes from SARs:

How do you access and implement learning?

• Shared in team meetings as lessons learned – e.g. Cawston Park learning in residential settings. Similar to post incident analysis in nursing
• Quality meetings and governance structures; asking individuals for reflections

What helps you do this?

• Keep momentum – SARs can deal with some very big issues / themes, difficult to integrate not day to day practice
• Communication strategies – ask what would be expected in organisations
• Simplify the learning

What do you think the barriers are?

• Lack of national direction / legislation
• Too much information / learning to be done – by some of the busiest people – don’t have enough time
• How to communicate across your organisation – and then know how to follow up to determine how it might have changed practice – Quality Improvement cycles
• SARs can happen after an organisation has already done their own internal enquiry and learning, so SAR recommendations can feel ‘after the fact’

2023

In 2023, the September topic of neglect and self-neglect considered where poor health or social care becomes neglectful. This led to information being shared about Healthwatch, across all the LSAPs.

We also talked about role of alcohol dependency in determining capacity, especially executive capacity; the potential impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs); and where carer breakdown can become abuse, however unintentional.

2022

In 2022 we had really great discussions helping us to achieve a shared understanding of a range of safeguarding issues, with modern slavery identified as a particular interest, and this interest fed into our July topic of Adult Exploitation. Many group members shared the videos we watched on the meeting with their teams and colleagues, and also promoted the child and adult exploitation e-learning with great feedback. 

The group identified a particular interest in modern slavery, County Lines, and have taken back to their agencies strong promotion of professional curiosity, particularly linked to learning for the Cawston Park SAR last year and DHR Daisy in this year.