Safeguarding Feedback: Provider Concerns and Norfolk County Council Update

The lack of feedback from safeguarding referrals to Norfolk County Council is a long standing concern raised by Adult Social Care providers to Norfolk Care Association.

Safeguarding was also an area where Norfolk County Councils latest CQC report judged them as requiring improvement. The report highlighted similar issues with the timeliness of responses, you can read about it here in the assessment.

Following up on providers concerns, Norfolk Care Association requested data on the percentage of safeguard reports that receive feedback. Norfolk County Council responded that 82% of safeguarding enquiries, and 87% of cases where the matter did not progress to a safeguarding enquiry, receive feedback. In dialogue with Norfolk County Council it was agreed that feedback should be given in all cases.

The full update provided to us is below:

“We are working hard to improved feedback – SCCE has started to streamline feedback at the front door.

We now have a core team at the front door who deal exclusively with safeguarding concerns, which should improve consistency.

We have introduced an online portal for safeguarding concerns to be reported quickly and efficiently. In response to feedback, a dedicated project has been set up to review the structure and function of the portal to make it more user-friendly. This will be completed in April 2026 following user testing. An update was given to NSAB in November and there will be a further update in January 2026. We will be involving our partners in the development work and we invite partners, including providers, to volunteer to test the portal form with us so we can be assured it meets the needs of those using it. If you, or a member of your team are able to volunteer, please contact us.

We have done work with our teams reminding them of the need to feedback to those reporting safeguarding concerns. It’s good to know that 82% of safeguarding enquiries and 87% of cases where the matter did not progress to a safeguarding enquiry receive feedback (dashboard data). We would obviously like to make this even better and faster.

We felt it important to explain that we receive high volumes of safeguarding concerns that don’t meet the criteria for safeguarding and it slows down operations dealing with these, so we appreciate any support in reducing these. Your ideas for supporting this would be welcome. It would really help us if providers consulted the NSAB framework and NSAB checklist for raising concerns to help inform their reporting, assist us with drawing the distinction between safeguarding and quality concerns, and ensuring sufficient information is given to us to help us handle the concern efficiently.

We are really wanting to emphasise a relational way of working and follow up everything with a conversation – but this is a fine balance in something like this where there are high volumes. Again, any ideas via the work would be very welcome. We will continue to discuss when we meet with Norfolk Care Association reps.”

Norfolk Care Association welcomes Norfolk County Council’s commitment to a relationship-based approach and its willingness to continue engaging with us and the wider provider sector. However, we are concerned that the response is predominantly framed around managing the volume of enquiries rather than focusing on ensuring individuals’ safety.

Training for practitioners emphasises the importance of reporting any issue that may indicate risk, and serious case reviews frequently highlight that sharing partial information, early warning signs or suspicions can prevent significant harm. We recognise that, given the high number of referrals, technology has a role in supporting workflow. Nonetheless, we are not fully assured that the online portal will achieve the intended relationship-based way of working. Providers consistently request named contacts to enable relationships to be built and facilitate dialogue around emerging issues.

We remain committed to working with Norfolk County Council to support ongoing development and improvement in this critical area.