Care home staff were anxious about increasing governance and scrutiny that did not appear to take account of general working conditions, poor resources, challenging workload and the emotional demand of coping in these settings. Under the Department of Health’s Care Act 2014, safeguarding requires local authorities to make enquiries if abuse or neglect is suspected. Some staff felt that enquiries were sometimes made into issues that were not related to neglect and that the process of being investigated impacted on morale and created a sense of distrust.Everything’s a safeguarding now, the bar is raised very, very high and we don’t see it as a negative, it is stressful when it happens in your home because you own your home and its, you think it’s a reflection on your home, and I think, I think the reason why it’s so stressful is that the social services raise safeguarding and then investigate … it’s not safeguarding if they didn’t change me within 5 or 10 minutes; it’s not a safeguarding. These are issues that we learn from. But already the flags are there, CQC (Care Quality Commission) is notified, and everything, everybody’s aware, and it just has a negative impact on the care in itself … It does have an impact. It does have an impact on morale (Care Home Manager).