Large Scale Investigations – or LSIs – can be a knotty issue for all involved. LSIs are a specific type of Adult Support and Protection intervention that is triggered when there’s more than one adult at risk of harm. LSIs can apply to services or organisations where people stay, like care homes or hospital wards. They can also apply to the experiences of people in the community – with services provided by care-at-home, day care, charities. Services don’t have to be registered with a national body to be subject to an LSI. Basically, LSIs apply when a service, or an alleged harmer (who may not even be connected to a service), is putting more than one adult at risk of harm.
If you read that and thought, “well, there’s potential for LSIs to apply across a huge range of situations”, then you’ve just got a flavour of what it was like to be on our short-life working group. Responsible for developing new national guidance on LSIs, in order to improve their effectiveness and consistency across Scotland, we were a multi-agency group that met six times over the first nine months of 2024.
Over the course of our six meetings, we poked our noses into every aspect of LSIs. When do they apply? What should trigger them? How can we share information more effectively? How can we prevent drift and delay? How do we ensure an LSI doesn’t effectively become maintenance of a service? How might we handle media interest? How do we ensure that our staff feel effectively supported during what can be a very difficult process? How can we deal with the (sometimes immense) ask they place on limited resources? And, most of all, how do we make them as effective as they can be?
There were no easy answers to any of these questions, but through our discussions we have tried to find a way through them. Our short-life working group was made up of many different local and national perspectives, and our debates ranged from very high-level considerations, to drills down into minute detail. Through these discussions, and the generosity of experienced folk in sharing their local policies, we are now building on the work done already to create the Adult Support and Protection National Large Scale Investigation framework. The end result will be new national guidance designed to improve the consistency of LSIs across Scotland.
Personally speaking, as the person who chaired the discussions and is now leading on the write-up of the national guidance, I found our short-life working group meetings both enriching and challenging. Enriching, because of the thoughtfulness that went into unpicking the issues, and the willingness to pull together to improve LSIs. The meetings really showed the ASP community in Scotland at its best. Challenging, because LSIs can be very tricky, and arouse strong emotions. And also challenging because we amassed a huge amount of information in a short time and I’m now trying to bring it all together to create succinct guidance!
What’s happening right now is the draft writing stage – head down, cracking on with the task at hand. There’ll be a period after that of peer comment and review, ensuring we get the most robust guidance possible. Publication will happen sometime in 2025, and it will be published on the Scottish Government website. Please do get in touch if you’d like to know more: jeanette.sutton@iriss.org.uk
