Making Safeguarding Personal: What It Actually Requires

Making Safeguarding Personal is the most widely referenced idea in adult safeguarding, and one of the least precisely understood. It is not a statutory duty. It is a sector-led approach, developed through work by the Local Government Association and ADASS, which the sector describes as sitting within the Care and Support Statutory Guidance that supports the Care Act 2014.

That distinction matters if you are writing a policy or answering an inspector. MSP is how you deliver your safeguarding duties well; it is not itself a duty you can be found in breach of.

What it actually requires

The LGA's guidance describes safeguarding under MSP as having four characteristics: it is person-led, it is outcome-focused, it engages the person and enhances involvement, choice and control, and it improves quality of life, wellbeing and safety. That description is attributed to paragraph 14.15 of the statutory guidance as revised in 2017.

The clearest summary of the shift comes from a safeguarding adults board's own briefing: MSP "empowers the adult at risk in making decisions about their own health and wellbeing rather than being controlled by a process."

And the LGA is explicit that this is not extra work: "This is not new or additional work; these are priorities and principles, within existing frameworks that need to be applied consistently in front line practice."

The six principles underneath it

MSP is not a separate framework from the six safeguarding principles. The principles are its foundation — the LGA states that policies, procedures, commissioning frameworks and contracts should be underpinned by the six statutory safeguarding principles as core to MSP.

One caution on the wording. Different published sources give slightly different one-line definitions of each principle, and we could not reconcile them against the statutory guidance text itself. The names and the order are consistent everywhere; the exact phrasing is not. If you are quoting them in a policy document, take the wording from the statutory guidance directly rather than from a secondary summary — including this one.

Desired outcomes: the part that is actually different

This is the operational heart of MSP, and it is more demanding than most training conveys.

The adult, or their advocate, should be asked about the outcomes they want to achieve at the very beginning of safeguarding support — not at the end as a satisfaction question. Those views are then sought at the beginning, middle and end of the intervention, recorded, and reviewed. At the conclusion, the person is asked how far their expectations in respect of both safety and wellbeing have been met.

Two details give this teeth. The desired and actual outcomes must both be recorded, so that whether an outcome was achieved — and if not, why not — is a documented question rather than an impression. And practitioners are expected to discuss options that are not available or are unachievable, rather than quietly leaving them out. One council's guidance puts it well: where someone expresses outcomes that are not possible, that creates an opportunity for frank discussion to establish what the next best option is.

The LGA's own warning is about exactly the failure mode you would expect: outcomes should be discussed throughout the process, "not just at the end, so that information on outcomes is a product of personalised practice, not a tick box exercise."

Where capacity comes in

MSP is not suspended when someone lacks capacity. The LGA guidance states that people who lack capacity are offered person-centred safeguarding support, and that an outcomes approach is provided to those who lack mental capacity as well as those with capacity.

Mental capacity assessment is expected to be an early consideration in safeguarding support, with the core principles of the Mental Capacity Act integrated into practice and particular emphasis on supported decision making. Where best interests decisions are made, the guidance is that this must be carried out as the Act intended, prioritising the wishes, thoughts and feelings of the individual. Our guides to best interests decision making and to the IMCA role cover how that works in practice.

Advocacy sits alongside it. The expectation is appropriate use and commissioning of advocacy both for people who have capacity and for those who lack it, and where someone cannot fully participate and has nobody to help them, the local authority arranges an independent advocate.

What none of the published guidance resolves is what happens when a person's stated desired outcome and a best interests determination point in different directions. The closest the material gets is that outcomes should reflect the adult's wishes and/or best interests and be proportionate to the concerns. In practice that tension is managed case by case, and it is worth naming in supervision rather than pretending the framework settles it.

What this means in a provider service

Most MSP material is written for local authority safeguarding teams, which is why it can feel remote if you work in a care home or a domiciliary service. The provider-facing expectations are real but simpler.

Providers are expected to develop staff and support them in preventing and responding to safeguarding concerns by getting alongside people to understand and respond to what matters to them. Staff should be empowered, supported and developed to adopt the approach, and — importantly — supported to balance sometimes conflicting principles, because wellbeing has to be considered alongside safety rather than beneath it.

Two concrete things inspectors have been noted as finding in well-rated services: staff support and supervision that includes exploration of MSP, and staff who understand the principles of both the Mental Capacity Act and safeguarding adults. If you want a practical test of whether MSP exists in your service, look at whether it appears in supervision records. Our guide to designated safeguarding lead requirements covers the role that usually carries it.

Two honest limitations

First, the evidence base is thinner than the enthusiasm. The programme produced evaluations in 2014, 2015 and a temperature check in 2016, and the one clear published finding is qualitative: that involvement of all partners in MSP has been uneven. Claims that MSP reduces repeat abuse within twelve months circulate in local briefings without a traceable source, and we would not repeat them.

Second, the material is ageing. The central guidance documents date from 2017, reference structures that have since changed, and the national data collection on outcomes was described at the time as a voluntary annual return. Whether that return still operates, we could not establish. The principles hold; the infrastructure around them should be checked rather than assumed.