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Introduction
This paper reports on and discusses the work of a Professional Standards Safeguarding Team (PSST) in co-ordinating a making safeguarding personal (MSP) pilot in central London in 2015. As previous papers in this journal have described (Cooper et al. , 2015; Manthorpe et al. , 2014; Timson et al. , 2015), the MSP initiative arose in response to concerns from adult safeguarding quality assurance activities that there was too great a focus on process and procedure. In the three London boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster (currently working together with many shared functions as Tri-borough) there were indications that whilst adults at risk appreciated the work of individual staff, some felt they had been through a "process" of safeguarding. It was acknowledged by several practitioners and managers that adult safeguarding work had tended to monitor outputs and reported on key indicators for local and central government, such as whether abuse was substantiated or not, and what was done as a result. The MSP pilot adopted in Tri-borough aimed to investigate the potential benefits of adopting an outcomes framework to adult safeguarding whilst exploring and developing new approaches to adult safeguarding practice that aimed to put user experience and supported decision making at the centre of practice.
Tri-borough's MSP pilot was also part of a larger implementation programme undertaken by the local PSST to respond to the new statutory adult safeguarding requirements of the Care Act 2014. (This local authority team of four senior practitioners/managers was set up in 2012 and supports Tri-borough frontline social services' staff in casework and in respect of their legal responsibilities.) The pilot's focus was on the impact of using an MSP approach on adults at risk, their representatives and professionals involved in a safeguarding concern within this context. The pilot aims encompassed improving:
* the experiences and outcomes for people who use safeguarding services to reach resolution and/or recovery;
* staff experiences in using systems, following the provisions of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, commissioning of advocacy, and so on; and
* the culture and practice of safeguarding.
Data were collected to enable the PSST to better understand how to improve local safeguarding systems to meet the needs of adults at risk who experience abuse...