Last month we shared a message from our CEO on Facebook about the PDA Society’s commitment to supporting safety in the PDA community. In this message, we committed to working with the community to convene a “Safe PDA Practice” panel to outline what safe and respectful practice should look like when working with professionals and advocates.
This work is now underway and we’ve put together the following plan for how we can coordinate this work inclusively and have an impact as quickly as possible.
The first step is to gather information via this community survey to help set priorities for the panel’s work. The survey will be open from now until 3rd May 2023 and anyone with an interest can respond.
Between May and August 2023, we’ll work with volunteers from the PDA community who have professional safeguarding expertise to draft relevant guidance and resources around safe practice for the PDA community.
From September 2023, a second group of volunteers from the PDA community will test and refine the guidance and support its dissemination within the community in time for Adult Safeguarding week in November. They will also review the PDA Society’s plan for ensuring we reflect the recommendations of the guidance in our practice. We expect all work to be concluded by the end of 2023.
[Update 28/4/23 – Expressions of interest for panel members and panel secretary are now open until 12th May 2023. Please visit the Safe PDA Practice Panel page for further details]. We’ll be inviting panel applicants in 2 stages. The first in April 2023 and the second in the summer. To be notified when applications for volunteer panel members are open, please enter your email address here and we’ll be in touch with information about these roles and recruitment criteria soon.
We hope this work will help everyone to feel confident in identifying what safe professional practice looks like and what action they can take if a professional acts unsafely.
Thank you for your interest and support – together we can make things safer.
