Abuse of Vulnerable Adults in England - 2010-11, Final report, Experimental statistics

The key facts below cover all data submitted by the 152 CASSRs when the final cut of data was taken in November 2011. Please refer to the Data Quality statement (Appendix B) for further details. Annex B also provides information about how many councils returned each data item of the collection.

In 2010-11, 62 per cent of the referrals were for women. Sixty one per cent were for older adults aged 65 and over. Almost half of the referrals (49 per cent) were for adults with a physical disability, 23 per cent were for mental health clients, 20 per cent were for learning disabled clients and the remaining 7 per cent were for adults with a substance misuse problem or other vulnerable adults.

The number of referrals per 100,000 population and standardised for age and gender was lower in the Southern regions (South West, 6 per cent, South East and Eastern, both 9 per cent). It was ten per cent in Yorkshire and Humber and 13 or 14 per cent in each of the remaining regions (in the North, Midlands and London).

Physical abuse was the most common type of abuse reported, accounting for 30 per cent of all allegations. This was followed by neglect (23 per cent) and financial abuse (20 per cent). Sixteen per cent of referrals were related to emotional or psychological abuse, followed by sexual (6 per cent), institutional (3 per cent) and discriminatory (1 per cent). Vulnerable adults were more likely to be abused in their own home (accounting for 41 per cent of all locations cited) or a care home (34 per cent) than any other location. The relationship between the vulnerable adult and the person causing harm was more likely to be a family member (25 per cent of all perpetrators) or social care staff (25 per cent). Thirteen per cent of the alleged abusers were other vulnerable adults, 12 per cent were recorded as either a friend or neighbour, volunteer, other professional or a stranger, and three per cent were health care workers. The remaining 22 per cent of relationships were recorded as either Not Known or 'other'.

The most common outcomes for the vulnerable adult were No Further Action (accounting for 31 per cent of the all the outcomes recorded), increased monitoring (26 per cent), 'other' (13 per cent) and community care assessment and services (10 per cent). Actions against the cause of harm were most likely to be No Further Action (34 per cent) or continued monitoring (17 per cent). Thirteen per cent of the outcomes for the perpetrator were not known at the time of reporting. All other outcomes for either the vulnerable adult or the perpetrator accounted for five per cent or less of the relevant total.

Accessing the AVA data
The underlying data for this publication is available through our National Adult Social Care Intelligence Service (NASCIS) online analytical processor, within the AVA tables. If you're not already a NASCIS user, you will need to complete the self-registration process - this should only take a couple of minutes.