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Introduction
This paper will discuss the following questions:
What lessons can be learned from first attempts to regulate care for adults at risk of harm in Scotland?
What are the common themes and recurring challenges of adult protection across the two time periods?
Background to the legislation
Scotland has developed overarching legislation for the protection of adults at risk of harm. This is built on existing legislation, filling gaps relevant to adult safeguarding to make provisions that overcome the acknowledged failings (Campbell et al. , 2012).
There are some common themes in the principles underpinning legislative change in the 1850s and the early part of this century, and there are also some long standing challenges to implementing effective adult protection in both periods. The success of the safeguarding activity in reducing risk is one measure of such effectiveness.
The concept of "asylum" is common to both pieces of legislation, in the original meaning, denoting protection, from the Greek asylos ("inviolable, safe from violence"). In 1857 legislators reviewed the evidence and were confident that building regional asylums would improve the quality of life for "lunatics" in Scotland and place individuals, "in a position of comfort and protection" ( The Journal of Mental Science , 1859). The third Annual Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy for Scotland (1861) noted that:
[...] an asylum becomes the best security for the provision of humane and appropriate treatment, by facilitating their removal from the influences of unfavourable circumstances whenever, through the ignorance or callousness of parochial authorities or the perverse conduct of relatives (General Board of Commissioners in Lunacy For Scotland, 1861, p. 181)
Similarly, the Scottish Government was convinced of the case for a change in legislation in 2007, "for the purposes of protecting adults from harm", (Scottish Government, 2007) including those with mental health problems and learning disabilities.
There is an existing, well detailed literature on the history of adults at risk of harm and their treatment and care in Scotland, in relation to what we now know as adult protection (e.g. Campbell, 1932; Anderson and Langa, 1997; Atkinson et al. , 1991, 1997; Bartlett and Wright, 1999; Brigham et al. , 2000; The Open University, 2013; Barfoot, 2009; Clapton et al. , 2013; Burnham, 2012). This...