Information and Advice

The term ‘information’ means the communication of knowledge and facts regarding care and support. ‘Advice’ means helping a person to identify choices and/or providing an opinion or recommendation regarding a course of action in relation to care and support. Local Authorities are required to establish and maintain an information and advice service relating to all local residents within its area, not just adults with care and support needs.

Section 4 of the Care Act states that Local Authorities must “establish and maintain a service for providing people in its area with information and advice relating to care and support for adults and support for carers”. Information and advice is critical to preventing or delaying the need for services and, in relation to safeguarding, can be the first step to responding to a concern. Information and advice about safeguarding should include:

All organisations involved with adults with care and support needs should ensure they are able to provide this service and can signpost adults to receive the right kind of help by the right organisation.

Whereas information may be generic to a lesser or greater extent, advice needs to be tailored to the person seeking it, recognising people may need different mediums through which to communicate. Advice and information should, where possible, be provided in a format that helps the information-seeker understand the information being conveyed. This should be cognisant of the Equality Act 2010. ‘Reasonable adjustments’ should be made to ensure that disabled people have equal access to information and advice services. Reasonable adjustments could include the provision of information in accessible formats or with communication support.

Organisations involved with adults with care and support needs,  have a number of direct opportunities to provide, or signpost people to information and advice in respect of safeguarding: