1. Making Safeguarding Personal: Evaluation 2014/15

2. What is Making Safeguarding Personal?
Making Safeguarding Personal is an approach to safeguarding that:
is person-led
is outcome-focused
enhances involvement, choice and control
improves quality of life, wellbeing and safety
(Care Act Guidance)
Download from

3. Chronology of MSP 2009/10: Literature review
2010/11: A Toolkit of Responses developed
2012/13: 5 Councils were ‘test beds’
2013/14: 53 Councils actively participated, reports, case studies etc published
2014/15: Mainstreamed to all Councils
Included in the Care Act guidance
MSP toolkit updated
LGA Domestic Abuse guide updated
Journal of Adult Protection Issue June 2015
RiPfA evaluation October/November 2015

4. What Making Safeguarding Personal can do
MSP enables safeguarding to be done with, not to people
MSP focuses on achieving meaningful improvement to people’s circumstances, rather than just on ‘investigation’ and ‘conclusion’
MSP utilises social work skills better than just ‘putting people through a process’
MSP enables practitioners, families, and SABs to know what difference is made in outcomes for people
N.B. in the Care Act – the wellbeing definition includes protection from abuse and neglect

5. Ensuring the person is at the centre
Put the adult and their wishes and experiences at the centre
Seek to enable people to resolve, recover and realise
Key Questions for whoever is undertaking the safeguarding enquiry
How can we work with people to enable that to happen?
What does the person want to happen?
So the kind of questions that we should be asking are:
What does the person want to happen?
How do we know their outcomes have been understood and our intervention is making a difference?
How can we work with people to enable their outcomes to be reached?
Does the person feel safer and protected, at the start and throughout the process?
How do we know their outcomes have been understood and our intervention has made a difference?
Does the person feel safer and protected, at the start and throughout the process?

6. MSP evaluation 2014/15
This evaluation aimed to find out the impact of the approach on:
The experience and outcomes of people who use services and their carers and families
The culture and practice of safeguarding
Factors that have helped and hindered using the approach

7. What did RiPfA do? Survey of MSP leads: 95/ 151 respondents (63%)
Survey of multiagency staff: 63 respondents (44%)
6 telephone focus groups of MSP leads (16 participants total)
5 telephone interviews with senior leaders in safeguarding
RiPfA commissioned to conduct evaluation
95 local authorities in England took part
Mixed methods approach

8. What did RiPfA find?
95% of respondents thought MSP was the right approach to be taking in the current context
Many respondents early in MSP journey
The types of work that councils had undertaken included:
partnership and project work
developing approaches to safeguarding
(such as family group conferencing)
staff development and awareness raising
changing systems
using feedback and evaluation

9. Is MSP providing good outcomes for people?
People with more direct experience of MSP were more likely to think the impact on people was beneficial
Methods used to understand people’s experience of safeguarding included:
Case audit; questionnaire; not yet started; recording systems; interviews
(51%) (42%) (33%) (22%) (21%)

10. What kind of outcomes are discussed?
To be and feel safer (45%)
To maintain key relationships (23%)
to gain or maintain control over the situation’ / ‘to know that this won’t happen to anyone else’ / ‘people have not yet specified outcomes’ (21%)
“the bit we found helpful …was… recording desired and negotiated outcomes” (FG1)

11. Impact on practice
MSP helped improve practice locally, use social work, gave permission to work in a person centred and outcome focussed way
Identified staff development needs, e.g. Mental Capacity Act, MSP Toolkit
Mixed picture about whether MSP leads to greater use of resources and time or not
Recording of outcomes needs more work
MSP is changing culture, which impacts on providers

12. Summary of recommendations:
27 recommendations in the evaluation report (
These are divided into People, Practice and Partners, summarised below:
People:
How to provide good outcomes for people by working with them through the process in a timely way
These slides summarise the 27 recommendations from the full report
Signpost people to the report to discuss recommendations in the context of their organisation.

13. Summary of recommendations:
Practice:
How to improve practice by supporting staff skills and capabilities
Learn through sharing good practice
Support a range of methods for staff learning and development
Ensure that recording systems can evaluate impact of MSP in order to understand what works well

14. Recommendations continued
Partners:
Ensure partner / multi-agency commitment to MSP/culture change through Safeguarding Adults Boards
Use the Care Act to lever broader culture change

15. Check list for future action
Key success features:
‘permission’ to work differently
development of the right skills
revise policy, procedures and systems
sharing good practice
effective use of the Mental Capacity Act
emphasis on and confidence in professional judgement
support from SAB and involve partners
acknowledge challenging financial climate and work on understanding longer term resource impact of MSP

16. Thank you!
Thank you to all the practitioners who gave their time to take part in this evaluation. Many thanks to Kate Cooper and Cadi Davies from the Local Government Association (LGA), Michael Varrow from the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS), and Kate Drew, Kath Wilkinson and Lisa Smith from Research in Practice for Adults (RiPfA) for their help and support with undertaking this evaluation. Thanks also to the MSP Advisory Group for advice on the development of the evaluation materials and comments on the report drafts. Particular thanks are due to Adi Cooper, Claire Crawley, Sarah Mitchell, Cathie Williams and Emma Jenkins for their leadership of this work and Kate Cooper, Michael Preston-Shoot, Jill Manthorpe and Bridget Penhale for their advice on research and evaluation. This evaluation was commissioned from Research in Practice for Adults and funded by the Department of Health through the LGA.

17. Useful Links Knowledge Hub details
MSP -
Adult Safeguarding Community Practice -
Further Information
LGA Care and Support reform adult safeguarding page:
DH Care Act Fact sheets -
SCIE information on the Care Act - and
SCIE on self neglect
MSP Materials
MSP Evaluation 2014/15
LGA Making Safeguarding Personal materials:
Preston-Shoot, M., & Cooper, A., (2015) eds. Special Issue on Making Safeguarding Personal, Journal of Adult Protection, Vol.17, No.3