Making Safeguarding Personal, in its simplest form, means putting the person at the centre of everything we do during a safeguarding enquiry, from the very beginning to the very end.
Making Safeguarding Personal 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 ‘investigation’ 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
What does Making Safeguarding Personal look like?
The approaches of agencies and services to adult safeguarding should be person-led and outcome-focused.
The Care Act 2014 emphasises a personalised approach to adult safeguarding that is led by the individual, not by the process. It is vital that the adult feels that they are the focus, and they have control over the process.
Making Safeguarding Personal is not simply about gaining an individual’s consent, although that is important, but also about hearing people’s views about what they want as an outcome.
People are given opportunities at all stages of the safeguarding process to say what they would like to change.
That might be about not having further contact with a person who poses a risk to them, changing an aspect of their care plan, asking that someone who has hurt them apologises, or pursuing the matter through the criminal justice system.
More about Making Safeguarding Personal and improving safeguarding practice on local.gov.uk