Making Safeguarding Personal

Making Safeguarding Personal (MSP) is an approach to safeguarding that is person-led and outcome focussed.

It is about having conversations with adults about how responses to safeguarding situations can be made in a way that enhances their involvement, choice and control as well as improving their quality of life, wellbeing and safety.

It is about seeing adults as experts in their own lives, and working alongside them to identify the outcomes they want.

It focuses on achieving meaningful improvements to adult's lives to prevent abuse and neglect occurring in the future, including ways for them to protect themselves and build resilience.

It recognises that individuals come with a variety of different preferences, histories, circumstances and lifestyles; so safeguarding arrangements should not prescribe a process that must be followed whenever a concern is raised, but instead take a more personalised approach.

Making Safeguarding Personal is firmly embedded in the statutory guidance for the Care Act 2014 and is an approach that should flow through every aspect of adult safeguarding, not just formal enquiries.

Making Safeguarding Personal does not mean 'walking away' if a person declines safeguarding support and / or a S42 enquiry.  That is not the end of the matter.  Empowerment must be balanced for example with Duty of Care and the principles of the Human Rights Act (1998) and of the Mental Capacity Act (2005). The need for balance on this issue is illustrated elsewhere within the Care Act (2014), in section 11, where it is explicit that although the local authority duty to carry out a needs assessment (S9) may be removed if the adult does not consent, this does not apply where the adult is experiencing or at risk of abuse or neglect (S11(2)(b)). In the event that there is no duty under S42 to make enquiries, the practitioner must still consider how any identified risk will be mitigated and how that will be communicated to the adult concerned ad n the person accused of causing harm. 

The LGA Making Safeguarding Personal Toolkit provides a range of helpful tools and practice based case examples.