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March 2026

From Velcro to the Shipping Forecast via a slow cooker, Kevin Bacon and defrosting a fridge: Reflections on a decade as a safeguarding board manager

Estimated reading time 9 minutes

What links the following: Velcro, Brad Pitt, a tin of tuna, the Shipping Forecast, Glastonbury tickets, haircuts, a subtle movement of the index finger and Hadrian’s Wall (twice)? See * below.

Regular readers of this blog might have spotted the link … these are just a few of the 100+ blog topics exploring adult safeguarding that I have written about during my ten and a half years as the manager for the Norfolk Safeguarding Adults Board.

Random, I know!

I vividly remember, shortly after starting in post at my first supervision session, my manager saying, ‘Oh, and don’t forget, there’s a monthly blog to think about…’

Up until that point I had never written a blog and didn’t really know how to go about it. But I soon got the hang of it: things that had caught my eye or something someone said that month, which made me think about the link to safeguarding adults.

110 blogs later, this will be my last one as NSAB manager, as I will be taking early retirement at the end of March.

It feels only right to say goodbye in the way safeguarding has taught me best: with reflection, some mild self-mockery, and a quiet sense that I’ve probably forgotten to fill in one last action log.

A decade in my role has taught me two immutable truths. First, never say ‘This will only take five minutes’. Second, don’t get distracted by ‘the bright, shiny windmills’.

Back in 2015 in my early days as board manager, I had a rather touching belief that clarity was just one briefing paper away. If we could simply explain safeguarding clearly enough, people would get it. If we could just get the right structure, the right strategy, and the right performance framework, safeguarding would glide effortlessly forward. 

One of the enduring joys I’ve had during my time as the NSAB manager is writing this blog to prompt us to think a little deeper about safeguarding. For example, take the language we use. We don’t just meet, we convene. We don’t disagree, we offer respectful challenge. And nothing, absolutely nothing, is ever ‘wrong’ – it is merely ‘an area for development’. I once heard someone describe a catastrophic systems failure as a ‘learning-rich environment’, which remains one of the finest examples of optimism I’ve encountered in public service!

I need to keep reminding myself (and I hope others along the way) that safeguarding is, at heart, about people, rather than processes. And it’s important not to confuse activity with impact felt.

Part of what keeps safeguarding interesting (and occasionally a challenge to getting stuff done) is that it intersects between the human and the bureaucratic. We deal daily with fear, trauma, resilience, and courage – and then immediately have to translate the need for action into systems which are not always as responsive as we would like or need them to be.

I have often used humour, not to make light of or distract from safeguarding, but as part of a survival strategy. If you’ve ever tried to schedule a meeting with six agencies, you’ll know why. Doodle polls are sent. Dates are proposed. Silence descends. Eventually, someone replies to say they can do the date that was already ruled out two weeks ago. When the meeting finally happens, one key person can’t attend but has sent their ‘apologies' and a very detailed email.

And yet progress DOES happen.

At times slowly, unevenly, sometimes disguised as déjà vu, but it DOES happen. Conversations about Making Safeguarding Personal, about listening rather than instructing, about risk as something to be understood rather than eliminated, are now mainstream. In 2015, these ideas were still occasionally greeted as radical, or worse, ‘interesting’.

Safeguarding often advances not through grand strategies but through small shifts in thinking, across relationships between colleagues in a team or between agencies. A practitioner pausing to ask one more question and listen a bit longer. A manager being willing to say, ‘I don’t know’. A colleague who pushes back when something doesn’t sit right. A board resisting the urge to produce another framework, and instead asking, ‘Can we evidence the impact of what we have done before, or show the change we are aiming for?’

Over ten years in Norfolk, I’ve seen safeguarding move closer to the people it’s meant to serve. I feel proud to have played my part, even if occasionally I have got distracted by something new and ‘shiny’ along the way, wondering if this needs a guidance note…

If there’s a thread running through the blogs – and through my own experience since I started in adult safeguarding back in 2010 – it’s a wary affection for the system we work in. We can see its flaws clearly. We raise an eyebrow or two or even have a wry chuckle at its habits. We occasionally despair at its pace.

But we stay, because safeguarding done well matters profoundly, even when it’s messy, even when it’s frustrating, and even when the minutes are longer than the meeting itself. I have seen this first-hand in the way of practitioners who keep going, partners who stick with difficult conversations, and boards that are willing, eventually, to look in the mirror and when necessary ask a brave question. I have seen Safeguarding Adult Reviews prompt genuine change.

Things I am proud of – the Tricky Friends animation, the awareness weeks, and contributing a chapter to the book on professional curiosity and safeguarding adults, the ‘In Conversation With…’ series talking with leading figures in adult safeguarding.

I’m proud of the bigger set-piece events and conferences too – for example, seeing more than 350 people listening so intently to Luke and Ryan Hart as they spoke so honestly and movingly about their experiences of coercive control and abuse by their father, which tragically ended in the murder of their mother and sister (The power of a piece of paper June 2019). Those moments felt important.

But I’m equally proud of the quieter moments, the one-to-one conversations (sometimes while passing on the stairs), sometimes just brief exchanges – helping thinking and reflection.

I’m proud of the way Norfolk SAB has played its part nationally: supporting other SABs, contributing to the wider conversation, and helping to grow the movement.

And if we can occasionally smile along the way while doing this important work, then I think we’re probably doing the right things, in the right way.

Over the years, I’ve learned that safeguarding boards are less like command centres and more like collective allotments. You can’t force things to grow. You can create the conditions, remove the weeds, and proactively support what emerges, seeing it as healthier than what went before. Occasionally, you discover that what you thought was a weed is actually something useful, and what you carefully nurtured has failed to thrive. This is called ‘governance’.

So yes, we will continue to convene, to challenge respectfully, and to identify areas for development. But most of all we will also keep telling stories, asking those awkward questions and reminding ourselves that behind every acronym is a person, and behind every policy is a human decision. We need to keep a focus on what matters … being compassionate, curious, and courageous. 

As I step away, I do so with a feeling of pride – for the board, for the partnership, for Norfolk, and for the important, sometimes odd, sometimes challenging, deeply important world of the SAB. Thank you to the colleagues who challenged, supported, helped and encouraged me along the way. I leave knowing that there will still be meetings that overrun (maybe not so much now as I am normally the person who makes them run over!), actions that migrate and debates that feel oddly familiar. But I also leave knowing that the important work continues, and that it matters.

This blog is dedicated to everyone who, over the past 10+ years, has taken action to protect another person from harm or has worked to make our safeguarding system stronger and more effective.

I would also like to offer some special thanks. To Joan, Heather and Natalie, the independent chairs I have had the privilege of working with; to all members of the Norfolk Safeguarding Adults Board, past and present; to the NSAB business team who work tirelessly behind the scenes; and to colleagues from across Norfolk working in so many different agencies and organisations.

I am also grateful to the other SAB Chairs I have connected with, the National Chairs Network, and all my fellow SAB Board Managers across the country who have inspired, supported and encouraged me along the way.

It has truly been a privilege to work alongside you all. Thank you.

I think we are after all very good at doing safeguarding. 

Walter Lloyd-Smith

Norfolk Safeguarding Adults Board Manager

*  Blog topics from: