Cuckooing is a practice where people take over a person’s home and use the property to facilitate exploitation. It takes the name from cuckoos who take over the nests of other birds. Criminal gangs often establish a base in a particular location, sometimes by taking over the homes of local vulnerable adults by force or coercion in a practice referred to as ‘cuckooing’.

There are different types of cuckooing:

• using the property to grow, deal, store or take drugs;
• using the property to sex work;
• using the property to store weapons;
• taking over the property as a place for them to live;
• taking over the property to financially abuse the tenant.

The most common form of cuckooing is where drug dealers or gang members take over a person’s home and use it to store or distribute drugs. For further information please click here

As a parent or carer, supporting a young person who lacks capacity to make financial decisions may be challenging. In particular, once a young person enters adulthood, you must decide if it is appropriate for you to continue to make financial decisions on their behalf, and follow the rules in place to allow you to do so.

This toolkit is a guide for parents and carers to make financial decisions on behalf of young people from ages 16 to 25 who may lack the mental capacity to make decisions for themselves.  It aims to explain the principles of decision making and the processes in place to make financial decisions on a young person’s behalf. These processes exist to protect young people and their money, as well as to help you empower them to make their own decisions about their finances, where possible. Please refer to the toolkit for further information.

It’s an opportunity for organisations to come together to raise awareness of important safeguarding issues. The aim is to highlight key safeguarding key issues, start conversations and raise awareness of safeguarding best practice. Cumbria Safeguarding Adults Board looks forward to supporting this important week in the calendar.  

Key themes for the week include:

• What’s My Role in Safeguarding Adults?
• Let’s Start Talking – Taking The Lead on Safeguarding in Your Organisation
• Who Cares For The Carers? Secondary and Vicarious Trauma
• Adopting a Trauma Informed approach to Safeguarding Adults
• Listen, Learn, Lead – Co-Production With Experts by Experience

For more information you can visit the Ann Craft Trust website here

NHS England established the LeDeR Programme (Learning from Lives and Deaths of indivduals with a learning disability) in 2017.

It aims to prevent early deaths of people with a learning disability and autistic people, while improving their care through reducing health inequalities.

You can watch the webinar here facilitated by the 'Staying Alive & Well Group'.  The short webinar will launch a short video developed by the Staying Alive & Well Group to explain what the LeDeR programme is and how it works.

In partnership with the North East & Cumbria Learning Disability Network, a Prevention of Adult Not Brought strategy and toolkit has been developed.  The strategy looks to:

1. Raise awareness of the adult not brought code and increase usage
2. Raise awareness of reasonable adjustments
3. Support services to identify those at risk of not being brought to appointments and mitigating risks
4. Improving whole workforce education in relation to reasonable adjustments
5. Link with the national reasonable adjustment flag and Learning Disability Autism Awareness Training

Health services are continually aiming to reduce the number of appointments that are unattended. In current times when waiting lists are high, minimising the number of clinical hours lost because a person did not attend their appointment has become even more important.

Please see the Prevention Not Brought Strategy and other resources here

If you care for someone, you can have an assessment to see what might help make your life easier. This is called a carer's assessment.

It might recommend things like:

• someone to take over caring so you can take a break
• gym membership and exercise classes to relieve stress
• help with taxi fares if you don't drive
• help with gardening and housework
• training how to lift safely
• putting you in touch with local support groups so you have people to talk to
• advice about benefits for carers

A carer's assessment is free and anyone over 18 can ask for one.

Created with carers and featuring their voices, ‘What I wish I’d known’ offers tips for new carers from experienced carers.

Please find the link to the webinar here

CSAB recently hosted an MCA week of action with each day focussing on a different principle from the Mental Capacity Act.  Throughout the week we delivered lunch and learn sessions and issued briefings with further information and resources intended to support practitioners in practice.

Each we day we focussed on a principle from the MCA, you can read the briefings and access recordings of the 3 lunch and learn sessions delivered on our website.  The sessions are brief (less than 30 minutes) and would be useful to watch and discuss in team meetings

Please see our MCA page on the learning zone to access resources here

Thanks to all our partners who supported through planning and delivery of the sessions and briefings throughout the week of action.

It is a number of years since CSAB last gathered information directly from staff.  The 2023 CSAB Staff survey is intended to evaluate the communication methods that are used to share messages and learning with staff along with an opportunity for staff to feedback and inform key CSAB projects.

The survey uses a mix of closed questions to support analysis, with open questions providing opportunity for staff to make any suggestions for improvement. Information gathered will inform the way we communicate and share learning and set direction for the CSAB Communications & Engagement sub-group

Please follow this link for the survey