Making Safeguarding Personal (MSP)

The Birmingham Safeguarding Adults Board (BSAB) supports and promotes the principles of MSP.

We believe that:

A shift in focus from process to people involves fundamental cultural and organisational change. It is not simply a question of changing individual practice, but the context in which that practice takes place and can flourish.

MSP is about having the conversation with the person first.

MSP continues to be a shift in culture and practice, in response to what we now know about what makes safeguarding more or less effective, from the perspective of the person being safeguarded.

It is having conversations with people about how we might respond in safeguarding situations in a way that enhances involvement, choice and control as well as improving quality of life, wellbeing and safety.

It is about seeing people as experts in their own lives and working alongside them. It is about collecting information about the extent to which this shift has a positive impact on people’s lives.

The key focus is on developing a real understanding of what people wish to achieve. This includes agreeing, negotiating and recording their desired outcomes, working out with them (and their representatives or advocates if they lack capacity) how best those outcomes might be reached, and the extent to which desired outcomes have been realised.

It is a shift from a process supported by conversations to a series of conversations supported by a process (Local Government Association (LGA) Making Safeguarding Personal Guide 2014).

Download our guide to Making Safeguarding Personal

More information about making safeguarding personal

Local Government Association
Social Care Institute of Excellence (SCIE)
Association of Director of Adult Social Services ADASS
National Institute of care and excellence (NICE)