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David M R Orr, Safeguarding Adults and the Law: An A-Z of Law and Practice, 3rd edn, Michael Mandelstam, The British Journal of Social Work, Volume 50, Issue 5, July 2020, Pages 1638–1639, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcz143
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Extract
The previous two editions of this work successfully established themselves as an important reference work for practitioners wanting a clear and informative guide to legal aspects of adult safeguarding. The second edition (Mandelstam, 2013) was published six years ago, and so this update is of considerable value in addressing changes introduced following the passing of the Care Act 2014 and important developments since. As previously, the book restricts its focus to England rather than the UK, and so does not attempt to cover the safeguarding frameworks of Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
A brief introduction discusses key institutions, roles and issues within adult safeguarding, providing a concise overview that the A–Z entries then go on to flesh out in detail. This is complemented by a brief section on the legal framework, essentially a shortlist of potentially relevant legislation and legal terms. After these twenty six pages of context-setting, the book proceeds to take the reader from the A (‘Abuse’) to the W (‘Witnesses’) of adult safeguarding (the letters X, Y and Z so far remaining relatively untroubled by safeguarding law). With the exception of one rather whimsical instance, ‘Elephant in the adult safeguarding room, see National Health Service’ (p. 202), which nevertheless has an important point to make about key safeguarding failures (pp. 20–1), the entry headings are user-friendly and correspond to terms that the average user will readily search for, making it easy to navigate. To my eye, the choice of entry headings covers the breadth of adult safeguarding without leaving obvious gaps; even ‘Brexit’ gets a one-sentence entry in relation to its likely effects on human rights.
