The Underpinning Principles

Making Safeguarding Personal

Making Safeguarding Personal (MSP) requires a shift in culture and practice to what we know makes safeguarding more or less effective from the perspective of the person being safeguarded. It’s about having a conversation with people about how we might respond in safeguarding situations in a way that enables their involvement, choice and control, as well as improving quality of life, well-being and safety.

What does MSP seek to achieve?

MSP seeks to achieve:

• A personalised approach that enables safeguarding to be done with, not to, people

• Practice that focuses on achieving meaningful improvement to people's circumstances rather than just on enquiry and conclusion

• An approach that utilises social work skills rather than just ‘putting people through a process'

• An approach that enables practitioners, families, teams and safeguarding adult boards to know what difference has been made

How to Support People to Achieve Outcomes

The well-being principle applies to all cases when carrying out any care and support functions in respect of a person. Well-being relates to:

• Personal dignity

• Exercising control over day-to-day life

• Physical health, mental health and emotional well-being

• Domestic, family and personal relationships

• Protection from abuse and neglect

• Social and economic well-being

• Suitability of living conditions

• Participation in work, education, training or recreation

• Contributions to society

It should be assumed that people are best placed to judge their own well-being. Their individual wishes, views and beliefs are paramount and people should be empowered to participate in their own care. Promoting individual well-being should be balanced with the well-being of their carers. Remember - carers can be entitled to carer assessments too.

Adults with Care and Support Needs and Decision Making

There is a presumption in law that adults have mental capacity to make informed decisions about their lives, regardless of their medical conditions, age or appearance. If someone is assessed as not having capacity to make a specific decision, including a safeguarding decision, those decisions will be made in their best interests as set out in the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and the Mental Capacity Act: Code of Practice.

Adults with care and support needs should be given information, advice and support in a form they understand and have their views included in all forums that are making decisions about their lives.

Decisions made by health and social care professionals should be timely, reasonable, justified, proportionate, ethical and fully recorded.

The adult safeguarding duty applies to an adult, aged 18 or over, who:

• Has needs for care and support (whether or not the local authority is meeting any of those needs)

• Is experiencing, or at risk of, abuse or neglect

• As a result of those care and support needs is unable to protect themselves from either the risk of, or the experience of, abuse and neglect

• The person’s inability to protect themselves must be as a result of their care and support needs

• All professionals who might work with or on behalf of people aged 16 and above, who might lack capacity, must have regard for the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and the Mental Capacity Act: Code of Practice

• There is a presumption in law that we are all able to make our own decisions about our own lives unless we lack capacity to do so. Just because we make a decision that other people think is unwise, that cannot itself be used to say we lack capacity

• Nobody has to prove that they have capacity for a decision; it is up to the person who wants to take over someone’s decision-making rights to prove they lack capacity

• Assessments of capacity must be ‘decision and time specific’: the person must lack the capacity to make a specific decision at the time it needs to be made