Working in collaboration with Keele University, Kings College London and CASCAIDr the VOICES team have recently produced a Safeguarding Toolkit for adults experiencing homelessness and exclusion – It can be used as an aid to fact finding by any practitioner working across homelessness or with adults experiencing other deep forms of exclusion where they have care and support need and are at risk.

The toolkit is not the final version yet, however we’re releasing it as a working prototype for testing.

The Safeguarding toolkit can be viewed and downloaded here. Please feel free to download, print and use the document subject to the disclaimer. All we ask in return is that you send us some constructive feedback to assist us in the final stages of development. Currently, the document is for use as a hard copy annotated by hand. However, our intention is that the final version will be completed by electronic means or on-line.

You can send us your feedback via email to: [email protected]

We are grateful to the many contributors that have already helped us to shape this prototype. Edits have been made as a result of previous feedback but we have not necessarily implemented all the suggestions due to current space or format restrictions. It may be possible to include more improvements as the document and format develops.

The toolkit contains 4 sections: Care and support needs, chronology of events (short term and long term), immediate risk factors and protection planning, along with hyperlinks to relevant resources. On the margins of each page there are things for you to consider when working through the document. Use the toolkit as an aid to fact finding and thinking where there are safeguarding concerns. You do not have to complete every section, but of course, the more detailed you are the better quality you’re safeguarding thinking and any subsequent referral will be.

Please note that this is to help you in your thinking and not to replace internal or external procedures for raising safeguarding concerns.

We hope that you find this resource to be useful and we look forward to receiving any feedback you might have, thanks in advance for enabling us to make this toolkit as robust as effective as it can be.