1. Safeguarding and the Care Act ADASS Spring Seminar 16th April 2015
Dr Adi Cooper & Mimi Konigsberg 1 1

2. Key Principles of the Care Act
the person knows best
person’s views, wishes feelings and beliefs should always be considered
the focus is on well-being, prevention or delaying the development of the need for care and support and reducing needs
decisions should be made taking all circumstances into consideration
decisions with the person’s participation
the need to balance the person’s wellbeing with that of family and friends involved with the person
the need to protect people from abuse and neglect
the need to minimise the restriction of rights or freedom of action
a strength based approach is critical to assessment and promoting independence
the need to consider risk and proportionality when deciding how best to respond to safeguarding concerns

3. Making Safeguarding Personal
is explicitly included in the Care Act
wellbeing definition includes protection from abuse and neglect as well as wellbeing in all other areas of life
Care Act new function includes the provision of services that prevent care needs from becoming more serious or delay the impact of their needs
6 principles of safeguarding – Culture Change

4. Six Safeguarding Principles:
Empowerment -“I am asked what I want as the outcomes from the safeguarding process and these directly inform what happens next”
Prevention - “I receive clear and simple information about what abuse is, how to recognise the signs and what I can do to seek help”
Proportionality - “I am sure that the professionals will work in my interest, as I see them and they will only get involved as much as needed”
Protection - “I get help and support to report abuse and neglect. I get help so that I am able to take part in the safeguarding process to the extent to which I want”
Partnership - “ I know that staff treat any personal and sensitive information in confidence, only sharing what is helpful and necessary. I am confident that professionals will work together and with me to get the best result for me”
Accountability - “I understand the role of everyone involved in my life and so do they”

5. Peer Challenge Message
“Peer challenges highlight that people tend not to be asked the outcomes they want. Often they want more than one outcome, which are sometimes not easy to reconcile. People generally want to feel safe but also to maintain relationships. For some people the only human contact they have is with the person/people who is/are harming/abusing them”
Peer review messages LGA June 2013

6. Making Safeguarding Personal The response -A simple message
‘Making safeguarding personal is about engaging with people about the outcomes they want at the beginning and middle of working with them and the ascertaining the extent to which those outcomes were realised at the end.’
‘To do this, a mix of responses is required to enable people to achieve resolution or recovery and access to justice’
LGA June Peer Review 2013

7. 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 should utilise social work skills better than just putting people through a process
MSP should enable practitioners, families, teams and SABs to know what difference MSP has made in outcomes for people
What MSP can do messages have come from what we have heard from managers and practitioners; this approach to Safeguarding has also resulted in more staff confidence in having difficult and complex conversations with people

8. A strategic approach to MSP
providing clear leadership in each agency working in safeguarding including elected members.
ensuring partner agencies are well-informed
introducing person-centred, outcome-focused practice to safeguarding is a cultural change that needs wide ownership
recognising that partnership engagement in this culture shift is crucial
building on existing good practice e.g personalisation
working across regions to deliver consistency of practice and procedures and workforce development
mainstreaming this approach as good social work practice

9. Operational approach to MSP
personalised information, advice and guides and language
safeguarding and MARAC meetings –participation and an outcomes focus
documentation – promote person centred practice and gather and report on quantitative and qualitative evidence
link to engagement and awareness raising – prevention
address the use and commissioning of advocacy services
focus on MCA and DoLS
understanding positive approaches to risk and supported decision making
encourage people to think about recovery as well as resolution using a range of creative responses

10. Making Safeguarding Personal
How to deliver a person-centred, outcome focused approach?
Key Questions for Practitioners:
What difference (outcome) is wanted or desired?
How can we work with people to enable that to happen?
How do we know outcomes have been understood and our intervention has made a difference ?
Does the person feel safer and protected ?
In safeguarding adults the focus of national information collection has been on process rather than outcomes, on quantitative data (how many, how often) rather than qualitative information that would indicate how well things have been done, or how helpful or effective the responses have been.
The toolkit aims to set a framework for response options that help people to work through what the desired outcome/s and purpose/s of safeguarding might be. The actual outcomes should be identified and agreed with the person at the centre of the safeguarding process.
Addressing this from the start of, and throughout, the process will ensure a greater focus on the needs and requirements of the person at the centre, and make it easier to ascertain and measure the difference that has been made.
Because many people in safeguarding situations have very difficult decisions to make about their lives, these questions may take some time to answer and many of the responses in this toolkit set out how this decision making may be enabled.

11. Making Safeguarding Personal Toolkit
What is it ?
The updated toolkit provides a range of models, theories, approaches, skills, areas of specialism which are already common but not used in the safeguarding context
Some approaches have been established in just a small number of pioneering council areas
Some development work is needed to customise to adult safeguarding
How can it be used ?
A practitioner guide, a resource for service development, a tool to stimulate innovation
Examples include (from a longer list):
Use of family and networks, including group conferences
Building resilience, confidence, assertiveness, self-esteem
Attachment based approaches
Motivational interviewing and cycles of change
Achieving Best Evidence skills,
Signs of Safety
Building resilience, confidence, assertiveness, self-esteem
Attachment based approaches
Motivational interviewing and cycles of change
Peer support, survivors networks, forums and circles of support
Use of family and networks, including group conferences
Therapeutic and counselling support
Brief interventions and Micro skills
Mediation and conflict resolution
Support for people who have caused harm
Restorative justice
Family and domestic abuse – Cycle of Abuse Model
Forced Marriage, FGM, modern slavery
Taking a more creative approach to responding to safeguarding situations may help to resolve situations more satisfactorily and possibly more cost effectively. The objective of this toolkit is to provide a resource that encourages councils and their partners to develop a portfolio of responses they can offer to people who have experienced harm and abuse so that they are empowered and their outcomes are improved.
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 up-dates and amendments to be made as development takes place or innovative and effective practice comes to light. Each section contains
an overview explanation of what the area is and why it is included
suggestions of the circumstances in which the response is or might be useful
suggestions for further development and/or potential piloting and research opportunities
Some areas have been more challenging for Councils to implement. These are the areas that Councils may want to consider developing either as skills or awareness development for staff or developing a dedicated pilot scheme.
Many areas will have overlap with the work of community safety partnerships, local safeguarding childrens boards and health and well being boards. Relationships with CCGs, police, voluntary and community sector and probation services could be developed through the SAB and utilised to jointly commission or develop services.
Pilots or approaches need not be large scale or even labelled as such – for example inviting people who have been harmed at a care home to a meeting where they are able to talk about their experience to the care home manager encapsulates the principles of restorative justice without the need for large scales resource input.

12. Implementation
The fundamental shift revolves around professional practice; practice that puts the adult and their wishes and experience at the centre of safeguarding enquiries and which seeks to enable people to resolve their circumstances, recover from abuse or neglect and realise the outcomes that they want
“it is not business as usual”

13. Making Safeguarding Personal - achievements
2009/10: Literature review
2010/11: A Toolkit of Responses developed
2012/13: 5 Councils were ‘test beds’
2013/14: 53 Councils actively participated
2014/15: Mainstreamed to all Councils with start up workshops 9 ADASS regional conferences
2 workshops for Safeguarding Adult Board Chairs
RiPfA evaluation (publication due in June 2015)
Updated MSP toolkit
Journal of Adult Protection Special Issue (June 2015)
DH/HSCIC work with IT providers
Support to individual L.A.’s and SAB’s
Updated LGA Domestic Abuse guide

14. Emerging Issues
leadership- national, regional and local-role of the DASS
how to engage partners / providers and align a MSP approach
how best to measure outcomes and ensure quality
managing DoLs/MCA workload pressures
commissioner/provider issues-stronger links + CCG’s, CQC, QSG’s
how to work with risk and engage Members on the dilemmas
workforce development -social workers and trainers
IT systems-support not hindrance
newer areas e.g. self-neglect and how to respond
balance of procedures and professional judgement
consumer/citizen engagement
What is the role of the DASS/AD In MSP leadership – need for permission for a different way of working

15. Questions for discussion
How are you embedding Making Safeguarding Personal forward?
What support do you need? What can you offer?
What issues are there for you in implementing the adult safeguarding aspects of the Care Act?
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