Torus Group believes that every vulnerable adult, child, and young person deserves to live a life free from harm, neglect and abuse and this November and December we will be proudly supporting both Safeguarding Adults Week 2023, followed by the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence campaign 2023.

Safeguarding Adults Week hosted by the Ann Craft Trust, is between 20 - 24 November 2023 focuses on how you can prioritise the welfare and wellbeing of yourself and others.

Safeguarding both adults and children is a priority for Torus, and we believe it is the responsibility of everyone, and we all have our role to play.

To underpin our commitment, we undertook a full independent safeguarding peer review, to assess strengths and identify areas for improvement in safeguarding children, young people, and adults at risk. Since our Strategy ‘Playing our Role’ launched in 2021, we have:

• Trained 1,590 employees from across the Group, with training tailored to each job role and are delivering a rolling programme.
• Launched a new process to allow colleagues to report and log safeguarding concerns on our housing management system.
• Completed a audits and case reviews to ensure we maintain standards and highlight opportunities for development, learning and improvement.

In 2022/23:

• 1,122 welfare concerns were raised (473% increase on previous year)
• 278 concerns logged relating to potential rise of abuse or neglect (157% increase on previous year)

Talking about the importance of upskilling colleagues and changing culture, Torus Safeguarding Lead, Jo Aston, said:

“We remain committed to creating a safer organisation culture and safer communities, and ensuring that all Torus colleagues, including contractors, HMS, and Board members - no matter their role - understands what safeguarding is, how it can affect both colleagues and customers and the critical part they play in keeping people safe.

“Torus Group employees have received safeguarding training and we have now created a rolling programme of training and new starters/refreshers will be delivered on a quarterly basis.

“Our mandatory training programme will also include Prevent training (which addresses all forms of terrorism and non-violent extremism) and domestic abuse training.”

“As part of Safeguarding Week, we will also be looking at the future and next steps in advance of the launch of our new Safeguarding Strategy in 2024.”

16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence 2023

As Safeguarding Adults Week ends, the 25 November is the International Day to End Violence against Women and the start of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, until 10 December (Human Rights Day), the international community has observed the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. The dates are significant, underscoring that violence against women is a violation of human rights.

This year’s theme will be “Respect Is…” and during the campaign we will be highlighting what is unacceptable behaviour, identifying domestic abuse, support available including specialist support, and how you can report concerns.

Talking about what Torus has done to break the cycle of domestic abuse, Jo continued:

“Since signing up for Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA) accreditation, we have been transforming how we as an organisation respond to victims of domestic abuse. We have made big progress to achieving the DAHA accreditation, with people from across the organisation have been working incredibly hard to review and improve how we identify domestic abuse, support victims, and help stop abuse.”

Over the last year Torus has:

• Launched our Domestic Abuse Champions, 16 Torus employees who have been trained to support HMS and Torus colleagues who think that someone (either a customer or colleague) may be experiencing domestic abuse.
• Introduced a new Domestic Abuse Team in Housing to provide a robust and tailored service to those experiencing domestic abuse and importantly triaging cases of reports of ASB and noise to ensure that they are not actually incidents of domestic abuse. Find out more about Noise Nuisance or Domestic Abuse here.

In 2022-2023, the new team logged 266 domestic abuse cases and between June-Sept 2023, they logged a further 324 Domestic Abuse cases.

Jo added,

“Our journey continues, and we have plenty more planned as we believe that everyone, from all walks of life, should be aware of the role they can play in helping to prevent neglect and abuse.”

Across both campaigns we will be highlighting different types of abuse, how to report concerns, accessing support and much more.

You can follow the Safeguarding Adults Week and16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence campaigns on Twitter and Facebook using #SafeguardingAdultsWeek and #16Days #16daysofactivism #orangetheworld, respectively.

Reporting a safeguarding – what to do if you are concerned about someone

Safeguarding covers a range of areas, including, but not limited to, neglect, self-neglect, physical abuse, emotional abuse, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, organisational abuse, discriminatory abuse, and financial abuse.

If you are concerned that a child, young person, or a vulnerable adult is at risk of or experiencing abuse or neglect, or you yourself are a victim of abuse, you should report it straight away so that the appropriate services can take the appropriate actions to prevent harm. Find out more about reporting and how to report here.

Domestic abuse support – victims and perpetrators

If someone you know is in an abusive relationship, you might feel powerless, but reporting your suspicions to the police can help the police and partnering organisations paint a full picture of abuse in the household.

There is also support available for those who feel they may be hurting others.

• Find out more about local and national domestic abuse support here
• Find out more about support for perpetrators of abuse here

No matter the situation, if you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 999 - if you are unable to speak always press '55' when prompted to confirm an emergency.