Making Safeguarding Personal (MSP)

Introduction

The term Making Safeguarding Personal (MSP) is used when referencing the need for safeguarding adults at risk to be person-led and outcome-focused.  It is based on engaging the individual in conversation on how best to respond to their safeguarding situation in a way that enhances involvement, choice and control as well as improving quality of life, wellbeing and safety.  The Care Act 2014 emphasises a personalised approach to adult safeguarding that is led by the individual, not by the process.  It is vital that the adult feels that they are the focus and have control over the process.

The Role of Safeguarding Adult Boards (SABs)

Safeguarding Adult Boards (SABs) have a role to play in developing a safeguarding culture that puts individuals at the heart of operational and strategic decision-making.  Some facets of this are:

  • a broader participation strategy
  • accessible information to support participation of people in safeguarding support
  • a focus on qualitative reporting on outcomes as well as quantitative measures
  • advocacy
  • person-centred approaches to working with risk
  • policies and procedures that are in line with a personalised safeguarding approach
  • strategies to enable practitioners to work in this way, by looking at the skills they need and the support they are getting to enable this shift in culture.

The LGA have made available a series of resources to help Boards in this aspect of their work.

Guidance and Resources

A guide to Making Safeguarding Personal was published jointly by the Local Government Association (LGA) and the Association of Adult Social Services (ADASS).

The LGA have published a toolkit handbook that provides support and guidance on the best approach to MSP and effective application of safeguarding with a range of tools and practice based case examples.  Accompanying the toolkit is a useful guide to accompany it.

One way of supporting service users to understand and be engaged with safeguarding and care planning is to enable them to understand the different terms and acronyms that professionals might use.  Below is a glossary that can be shared with service users and their families:

To support quality assurance of MPS, ADASS, LGA, IPC and Research in Practice for Adults (RiPFA) have produced an outcomes framework: