Issue 43 | April 2026
Welcome to the April edition of Pass It On News.
A bi-monthly newsletter bringing you the headlines and new policies, procedures and guidance from your West Sussex Safeguarding Adults Board.
In this newsletter
March saw the final quarterly full Board meeting for 2025/26.
Board members heard a safeguarding case study from Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. The case highlighted excellent practice from ward staff in managing risk and Making Safeguarding Personal, as well as demonstrating the complexity of safeguarding for patients with multiple and compound needs within a mental health in-patient setting.
Lessons learned during our most recent Safeguarding Adult Reviews were shared with members, followed by an update from Public Health on the West Sussex Suicide Prevention Framework and Action Plan. The Board heard information from the newly established Sussex Integrated Community Teams about their development and remit, and how they will support safeguarding in local neighbourhoods. West Sussex Commissioning also led an important discussion on the local adult social care market, sharing salient information and also importantly the work that is being done to monitor and mitigate risks as they emerge.
The next full Board meeting takes place in June 2026.
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In February, we held our annual Board priorities meeting with our members from across the partnership, to decide on our topics of focus for the upcoming financial year (2026/27).
The meeting was well turned out, with great attendance from an array of agencies, resulting in a range of ideas, perspectives and rich discussion. Board members agreed to two Board priorities this year: coercive control and disguised compliance, and financial abuse. This article outlines how the Board decided on these two priorities.
Read more about this in our blog:
Following its scheduled review, the first since its initial publication last year, the Complex Needs Toolkit has been revised and rebranded as the Multiple Needs Toolkit.
As part of this review we have added a new template document for your use; the Commonly Held Information Picture, also known as the CHIP.
The aim of the CHIP is to develop a single, informed picture of the person, derived from information from all sources involved in their support. This will enable a single and agreed view of risks, mitigations and actions to be produced, updated and shared with partners and will support multi-disciplinary meetings. This approach has been informed from learning derived from Serious Incident and Rapid Reviews.
Visit the updated toolkit:
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Concerns around self-harm can, and do, co-occur with concerns around abuse and neglect that are covered under the Care Act. This means that, whilst self-harm does not indicate a safeguarding concern on its own, self-harm may be a factor in safeguarding cases.
Therefore, it’s important that staff working in West Sussex are aware of the signs and risk factors for self-harm, and how to access support for adults engaging in or at risk of self-harming behaviour; both for those who meet the Care Act criteria for safeguarding, and those who sit outside of it. We have therefore published a new webpage, providing information about self-harm, risk factors, identifying self-harm, and accessing support.
Visit our new webpage:
Have you visited the West Sussex Safeguarding Adults Board blog?
Coming to you directly from the Board Support Team, you'll find blog posts, featuring input from subject experts, exploring key adult safeguarding topics, as well as discussions about health and adult social care policy, learning, and research. In case you've missed them, here's a roundup of our most recent posts:
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