Making Safeguarding Personal (MSP)

What is 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.

What MSP Seeks to Achieve

  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. Improvement to people’s circumstances rather than on ‘investigation and conclusion’
  4. Utilisation of person-centred practice rather than ‘putting people through a process’
  5. Good outcomes for people by working with them in a timely way, rather than one constrained by timescales
  6. Improved practice by supporting a range of methods for staff learning and development
  7. Learning through sharing good practice
  8. Further development of recording systems in order to understand what works well
  9. 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.

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 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.

Empowering People and Building Confidence

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

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 in criminal proceedings (this is an interview technique to enable witnesses/victims to provide best evidence in Court).

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 working 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 but 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

Support for Victims

Vulnerable Witnesses – Guidance for Social Workers

Evaluation of Safeguarding Enquiries and MSP

The effective evaluation of Safeguarding Enquiries is a crucial part of MSP and fundamental to the principles of improving and learning through sharing good practice. Therefore, the engagement of the adult in the evaluation of a Safeguarding Enquiry, by statutory services, should follow the same guidelines previously outlined in the ‘providing personalised information’ section

All Teeswide Safeguarding Adults Board published documents can be found on the Board’s website:

TSAB Policies Procedures and Guidance

It is important to consider any children who may be at risk in matters related to adult safeguarding. Further information can be found on the Safeguarding Children Partnerships website or via the Think Family Guidance.

Version 3

Next Review Date: April 2025