^^^ the above post raises a point about Adult safeguarding.
For the benefit of the forum, the above question raises things that some may find interesting.
Working in IT, some of my work leads me to have held an enhanced DBS certificate for working among vulnerable people (adults and children) for quite a while.
Adults are totally different to children, but in terms of adults, people who work with the vulnerable have to attend various courses/seminars, as you'd probably expect.
An interesting one is DoLS which stands for Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards. It's all part of the mental capacity act of 2005.
There is very little that can be done with vulnerable adults IF they have what is called capacity to make decisions and understand the consequences of those decisions.
In a summarised way:
1) capacity MUST be assumed.
2) individuals must not be treat as unable to assume capacity, unless all methods of communication has been gone through.
3) If unwise decisions are made, it doesn't mean they lack the capacity to make the decisions and therefor the consequences.
4) If any intervention IS to be made, it has to be made with the best interests of the individual.
I have great sympathy for people who work with vulnerable adults and the bottom line is quite often "The helpers (who ever they are) tend to be there to pick up the pieces"
This might be very hard for some of you to understand, it was and still is for me - it's just the way it is.