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Abuse of Vulnerable Adults in England - 2012-13, Provisional report, Experimental statistics
Official statistics- Publication Date:
- 12 Sep 2013
- Geographic Coverage:
- England
- Geographical Granularity:
- Country, Regions, Councils with Adult Social Services Responsibilities (CASSRs)
- Date Range:
- 01 Apr 2012 to 31 Mar 2013
Summary
This report contains information on alerts and referrals to adult social care safeguarding teams in England derived from the Abuse of Vulnerable Adults (AVA) data collection for the period 2012-13. It presents a variety of information on aspects of the safeguarding process.
Please note that this report is being made available to the public as Experimental Statistics, which is defined in the UK Statistics Authority Code of Practice for Official Statistics as new official statistics undergoing evaluation. They are published in order to involve stakeholders in their development.
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Highlights
In 2012-13, a total of 173,000 safeguarding alerts and 112,000 safeguarding referrals were reported for vulnerable adults aged 18 and over in England.
For councils who reported on referrals in 2011-12 and in 2012-13, the number of referrals has increased by 4 per cent (4,000 referrals).
61 per cent of safeguarding referrals were for women and 61 per cent were for vulnerable adults aged 65 or over. Half of the referrals (50 per cent) were for adults with a physical disability. The rate of referrals per 100,000 population was highest in the West Midlands (320), North West (300) and London (295) regions in 2012-13.
Physical abuse and neglect were the most common types of abuse reported in referrals, accounting for 28 per cent and 27 per cent respectively of all allegations.
The alleged abuse was more likely to occur in the vulnerable adults own home (accounting for 39 per cent of all locations cited) or a care home (36 per cent) than in other locations.
The source of harm was most likely to be cited as a social care worker (31 per cent of all perpetrators) or a family member (a combination of the Partner and Other Family Member categories, 23 per cent).