This seminar is organised by the IASW’s Adult Safeguarding and Protection (ASaP) Associate Group and is the second in a series of seminars titled Making the Invisible Visible.

Kate Spreadbury is an independent social worker specialising in adult safeguarding. Kate’s work around Safeguarding Adult Boards and Reviews has been important in evaluating and reviewing both the regulatory and day to day functioning of safeguarding in England and Wales. 

The Adult Safeguarding Practice Handbook (Kate Spreadbury and Rachel Hubbard) has been extremely important in bringing the various practice issues and institutional barriers to the fore. Making safeguarding personal, an ADASS practice framework, will be a key theme for safeguarding adults' work in Ireland through law, policy, regulation and practice. 

Anne O’Loughlin is a retired social worker, whose career specialised in medical social work with older people. Anne’s work of advocacy for public and professional awareness of elder abuse from the mid 1980’s, culminated in co- authorship with Dr. Joseph Duggan of a seminal report Abuse, Neglect and Mistreatment of Older People: An Exploratory Study (1998). This report advocated for the establishment of a Working Party on Elder Abuse at the Department of Health and led to subsequent policy development on elder abuse in Ireland, which was later incorporated into the Health Service Executive Policy Safeguarding Vulnerable Persons at Risk of Abuse (HSE 2014). Anne was awarded a PhD from University College Dublin for her research Witnessing Elder Mistreatment in Nursing Homes: Social influences on non-reporting by staff who witness elder mistreatment perpetrated by colleagues. Anne sees IASW membership as a key to continuing advocacy on this important issue.