Making Safeguarding Personal

Making Safeguarding Personal (MSP) is an initiative which aims to develop a person-centred and outcomes focus to safeguarding work in supporting people to improve or resolve their circumstances.

MSP is applicable to all agencies working with adults in relation to safeguarding, including those at the initial stages of a safeguarding concern being identified. This guidance is designed to provide advice on how best to engage with adults, and work in a committed, multi-agency partnership approach to the subject

The first three notes outlined below are particularly applicable to all agencies, and the guidance as a whole acts as a summary of the wider subject.

What MSP Seeks to Achieve:

A personalised approach enabling safeguarding to be done with and not to people, using practical methods defined by the adults individual needs rather than those of an organisation
The outcomes an adult wants, by determining these at the beginning of working with them, and ascertaining if those outcomes were realised at the end
Improvement to people’s circumstances rather than on ‘investigation and conclusion’
Utilisation of person-centred practice rather than ‘putting people through a process’
Good outcomes for people by working with them in a timely way, rather than one constrained by timescales
Improved practice by supporting a range of methods for staff learning and development
Learning through sharing good practice
Further development of recording systems in order to understand what works well
Broader cultural change and commitment within organisations, to enable practitioners, families, teams and the Board to know what difference has been made.

All organisations should consider the implications for the ongoing professional development of their workforces in relation to MSP.

Guidance Notes

Providing Personalised Information and Advice:
People cannot make decisions about their lives unless they know what the options are, what the implications of those options may be and have had the chance to really consider them. Professionals involved in dealing with safeguarding concerns should take time to consider what information needs to be made available to assist people at the right times, in the right place, in what format, and allowing time for information to be digested.

Supported Decision Making and Freedom from Undue Influence: Supported decision making focuses on the outcomes the person wishes to achieve, what is working in their lives and what is not. There should be a mechanism to clearly guide and record the ‘conversation’ about choice and risk. There may be areas of disagreement between people, their family carers and practitioners, needing negotiation and support. Attention needs to be given to the support needs of those with special language and sensory needs, giving the individual the best chance to make decisions for themselves.

Advocacy and Involvement: Self-advocacy, long term citizen advocacy and peer advocacy are all useful in preventing abuse and responding to concerns by supporting the wellbeing and rights of people involved. Issue based advocacy enables people to participate in the safeguarding enquiry by supporting them to review options, decide upon outcomes, and participate in discussions and decision-making. Collective advocacy may have a place in settings where abuse has previously occurred and people who live there want to influence changes.

Mental Capacity and Best Interests: In all cases where a person has been assessed to lack capacity in a relevant issue, a best interest’s decision must be made. A balance sheet approach may be helpful in order to determine where a person’s best interests lie. This is about weighing up the factors in favour and against a particular decision or course of action. Only to weigh up one set of risks (for example, in preserving the status quo) without weighing up alternative risks (of changing the status quo) will not give the full picture necessary for a best interests decision.

Other people may have a formal role in this process such as a Deputy, Attorney (via a Lasting Power of Attorney) or a Relevant Person’s Representative (RPR). An Independent Advocate or other professional such as an interpreter may also have a part to play , as well as family members or friends who might be involved as an informal advocate/substitute; and of course the adults views and wishes should still be considered, whilst continuing to remember that the adult may regain capacity.

Professionals should encourage participation by consulting anyone who has a relevant interest, and by identifying all of the circumstances without making assumptions, and restricting the person’s rights (discrimination).

Signs of Wellbeing and Safety: By mapping out the case situation, the practitioner and service user can see how wellbeing is defined, and signs of improvement are found through a range of informal and formalised methods.

Dealing with Risk in Particular Relationships, Including When Employing Personal Assistants: The emphasis is on getting to know the person well enough to understand their family situation, their friends and social contacts as well as their community, in order to assess the strength of wider support networks. Working to reduce potential isolation and dependency on one person is helpful in preventing and responding to high risk in caring situations. Risk assessment models such as ‘Signs of Safety’, which look at danger, safety and strengths, could be considered, as could a ‘Circle of Support’, peer and volunteer support and organisations.

Building Resilience, Confidence, Assertiveness, Self-Esteem and Respect: Taking a ‘strengths’ perspective to assessment in safeguarding assists the practitioner to recognise the person’s skills and capacity to manage stress, and influences practitioners to provide or impart the coping skills necessary for a person to manage problem situations: assertiveness work with individuals or groups; peer support; therapeutic counselling; drama, art and music therapies.

Family and Networks, Including Group Conferences: The family group conference or network meeting model is based on empowering the network of extended family members and friends to participate in support for individuals. The principles include the belief that any plan made by those chosen by the person concerned is more likely to be successful than one been imposed by outsiders or professionals.

Brief Interventions and Micro Skills: Brief interventions aim to equip people with tools to change attitudes and handle underlying problems. These interventions may be of help with individuals who are making capacitated but high risk choices at various stages of safeguarding, or who appear to be reluctant at a particular point in time to engage in processes that help them to change their circumstances:

Attachment based approaches (relevant to adults)
Motivational interviewing
Counselling
Achieving Best Evidence.

The provision of advice may also be helpful in ensuring the person knows where to go when they do decide to seek support or wish to change their circumstances.

Support for People Who Have Caused Harm: There are some contexts where work with people who have caused harm or abused someone else is relevant to adult safeguarding. This might be helpful when:

Someone wants the abuse to stop, not the relationship
The person who is causing the harm is willing to address the impact of and change their behaviours
There has been a family history of intergenerational abuse
There are linked substance misuse, mental health or mental capacity issues in relation to the person who is causing the harm or abuse
Carers are under stress or the person causing harm is a vulnerable carer
An institution identifies harmful behaviours that may be subject to change in their staff group (alongside supervision, appraisal, disciplinary)
Through the criminal justice system to prevent continued harmful or abusive behaviours.

ADASS Making Safeguarding Personal Guide

This guide is intended to support councils and their partners to develop outcomes-focused, person-centred safeguarding practice. It was originally drafted to support the 53 councils who signed up to Making Safeguarding Personal (MSP) in 2013/14. It has been updated based on their experience. It gives some guidance about how to embark upon and take forward Making Safeguarding Personal in your council if your local area is interested in the approach.

Please click on the link below:

Making Safeguarding Personal Guide ADASS 2014

ADASS Making safeguarding personal:

A toolkit for responses

The toolkit is set out in a modular format with a summary of key areas. These areas range from models, theories and approaches to skills and areas of specialism that safeguarding practitioners need to be aware of. It can be used as a practitioner guide for pointers on how to respond to individual cases, or as a starting point resource for service development. It has been designed as a resource that will develop over time and allow updates and amendments to be made as development takes place or innovative and effective practice comes to light.

Each section contains

a) an overview explanation of what the area is and why it is included

b) suggestions of the circumstances in which the response is or might be useful

c) suggestions for further development and/or potential piloting and research opportunities

Please click on the link below:

ADASS Making Safeguarding Personal Toolkit

Research in Practice for Adults

Resources to support MSP FAQ

The information below captures the questions asked at the outcomes framework workshops and links to resources. If you would like to add questions to this document please contact Lisa.Smith@ripfa.org.uk

Delegates at the outcomes framework workshops requested greater guidance for partnerships in understanding their roles and responsibilities.

There are six guidance documents in existence in the following web link

MSP Resources

The are:

Support for boards across the Safeguarding Adults Partnership
What might ‘good’ look like for health and social care commissioners and providers?
What might ‘good’ look like for the police?
What might ‘good’ look like for advocacy?
What might ‘good’ look like for those working in the housing sector?
Supporting involvement of service users

Delegates at the outcomes framework workshops highlighted that boards may benefit from greater guidance around working risk, specifically consideration that risks will remain and that this is not necessarily a negative.

Case studies and guidance can be found in the following web link

Working with Risk

Delegates at the workshops requested further guidance around the use of the MSP outcomes framework:

The MSP outcomes framework final report contains a lot of guidance about how to use the framework and also suggestions of ways in which to gather feedback

Outcomes Framework Report May 2019

Section 3.5 gives detail about gathering feedback from individuals

Section 5 provides detail about the development of audit style questions for SABs

Section 7 considers benchmarking of data

Delegates requested information for local leaders on Making Safeguarding Personal:

This document provides greater information around MSP for leaders

Effective Councils