Research
The architecture of structural irrationality in adult safeguarding
A Research Investigation
A statutory regime designed to protect vulnerable adults from harm appears, by the structural logic of its incentives, to be associated with significant harm of its own. The pattern is recognisable across England, and Bristol provides an unusually well-documented case study. This is the diagnostic essay of the Adult Safeguarding Review series, drawing on organisational theory, the academic literature on defensive practice, and the empirical record across Ombudsman decisions, Safeguarding Adults Reviews, and regulatory audits.
By Antisocial Care
Investigation
Industries that learn — and the one that won't
Why the Regime Cannot Improve Itself
Software, aviation, anaesthesia and lean manufacturing share a structural property that makes them visibly better year on year. Adult safeguarding has none of it. The question is no longer what's wrong with safeguarding, but why it lacks the apparatus every learning industry has been built around — and what an Adult Social Care Investigation Branch modelled on the AAIB and HSSIB would actually look like.
By Antisocial Care