Safeguarding concerns in RBWM care homes fall – but hate crime reports rise

More than 200 concerns relating to nursing and care homes in RBWM were submitted last year – though the number serious safeguarding claims has fallen.

Standout points:

• Neglect reports fell dramatically within a single year
• Modern slavery cases dropped to zero
• But reports of hate crimes jumped up significantly.

Freedom of Information requests looked at the number of concerns flagged from 2020-2024 and how many of these were proven to have merit.

Data also looked at the most common types of abuse, and how this has changed over the years.

There were 200 concerns received from nursing or care home providers in 2024 – and between January and June this year (2025), there were 142.

Mandatory investigations

Some complaints lead to Section 42 enquiries. This marks the threshold where a safeguarding issue – ie risk of abuse or neglect – is serious enough that the local authority must investigate.

The year 2023 saw the greatest number of these in five years – 253 – and 2024 saw a significant drop, down to 68. This is the lowest number in recent years.

Of more importance is the number of ‘substantiated’ enquiries, ie, cases in which the investigation found evidence supporting the safeguarding concern.

For 2024, about 38 per cent of the claims were substantiated. This is higher the two previous years.

The most dramatic year for substantiated claims was 2020, reaching 77 per cent of claims.

Types of abuse

The most common safeguarding enquiry across all years is neglect. The number of reported incidences fell dramatically in a single year between 2023 and 2024, from 352 to 131.

Across years, neglect is the only type of safeguarding issue where reports stretch into the hundreds.

The next most common is financial abuse – taking advantage of someone’s finance. This can be anything from theft to coercion for financial gain.

Reports of this went from 113 cases to 64 between 2020 and 2024.

Next most common was physiological abuse, which went from 75 cases in 2020 to 43 in 2024.

Then it was physical abuse, which dropped by a third between 2020 and 2024, from 96 down to 31 reported cases.

Self-neglect – where someone is unable to care for their own health and safety – is also included, as care settings are expected to use measures to support people away from it.

Reports of self-neglect dropped somewhat, as did sexual abuse cases, from 22 reports to 15.

RBWM's care settings saw no reports of modern slavery in the past three years, having had four in 2021 and three in 2020.

The one outlying figure is hate crime, which has gone up. There were 11 cases – the highest number of recorded concerns across all the years.

There were no cases at all in 2022 and 2021.

A spokesperson for RBWM said: “Over the past twelve months, Adult Social Care has delivered free training to care homes across the borough, helping staff and leaders strengthen skills and raise standards.

“While we recognise there is always more to do, this work makes a real difference: 80 per cent of care homes for older people in the borough are now rated good or outstanding by the Care Quality Commission, significantly above the national average.”