Lead Child Protection Practitioner

Cambridgeshire County Council; Cambridge; Hybrid; GBP 50,000 - 62,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Market supplement

Benefits package

Wellbeing package

Relocation package

Refer a Friend £350

CARE development

Job summary

Cambridgeshire County Council seeks a Lead Child Protection Practitioner to provide senior safeguarding leadership within the Family Help Service. You will oversee decisions, chair strategy meetings and multi‑agency forums, including Section 47 enquiries, to ensure child‑focused safeguarding and high‑quality practice.

You will influence practice through expert guidance and mentoring, supporting frontline practitioners and managers to make safe decisions for children and families across

Qualifications

• Qualified Social Worker registered with Social Work England.
• Significant post-qualification frontline child protection experience.
• Ability to identify and balance risks, and provide professional advice.

Responsibilities

• Convene and chair strategy meetings with leadership and decision oversight.
• Lead complex multi‑agency decision‑making and coordinate joint investigations.
• Sign off Section 47 enquiries and support visits to families.
• Provide oversight and quality assurance of child protection practice.
• Chair child protection conferences and develop multi‑agency plans.
• Engage with children, young people and families to inform planning.

Skills

Communication skills

Interpersonal skills

Relationship-building

Analytical thinking

Coaching & partnership

Education

Social Work degree

Job description

Lead Child Protection Practitioner

Are you an experienced Child Protection professional, Team Manager, Child Protection Conference Chair or Senior Practitioner looking to further your career development? Do you want the opportunity to use your expertise to support the development of a new Families First model? Are you passionate about improving outcomes for children, young people and their families? We'd love to hear from you.

As a Lead Child Protection Practitioner (LCPP), you will work collaboratively with managers, social workers, colleagues within the Family Help Service and partner agencies as part of a Multi-Agency Child Protection Team.

This is a senior practice leadership role with a focus on strengthening and promoting high-quality child protection practice across the partnership. You will provide professional oversight, scrutiny and challenge to support effective decision-making, consistency of practice and positive outcomes for children.

This role carries significant responsibility for safeguarding decision-making and requires sound professional judgement, confidence and substantial safeguarding expertise. A central aspect of the role is making complex threshold decisions for children suffering or likely to suffer significant harm. You will lead multi‑agency decision‑making forums, including decisions relating to Section 47 enquiries, determining when multi‑agency investigations are required, chairing strategy discussions and child protection conferences, and making recommendations on threshold for Child Protection and Child in Need plans. You will ensure safeguarding processes are robust, supportive, transparent and child‑focused, while also supporting frontline practitioners through professional advice, guidance, consultation and mentoring.

While this is not a line management role and does not have direct responsibility for a team, you will be expected to influence practice through your expertise, consultation and professional leadership, supporting practitioners and managers to make safe and effective decisions for children and families.

You will receive a salary of up to £56,054, plus a £2,000 market supplement, alongside our generous local government benefits package.

The role can be based in a variety of locations across Cambridgeshire, your preference can be discussed at interview, and offers a mix of office and home working. There is also an expectation to attend conferences and potentially home visits across the county.

What will you be doing?

• Convene and chair strategy meetings, providing leadership, professional expertise and effective oversight of decision-making.
• Lead complex multi‑agency decision‑making, including determining when joint investigations with partner agencies, such as the police, are required and identifying when medical examinations should be undertaken.
• Sign off Section 47 enquiries and in some instances, support the Family Help Practitioner to visit families.
• Provide oversight, scrutiny and quality assurance of child protection practice and processes.
• Chair child protection conferences and support the development, review and progression of effective multi‑agency child protection plans.
• Work directly with children, young people and families to ensure their views and experiences inform planning and decision‑making.
• Provide professional advice, guidance, consultation, direction and training to teams and managers.
• Support practice development and contribute to continuous service improvement.
• Build and maintain effective relationships with partner agencies to promote strong collaborative safeguarding arrangements.

About you

You must be a qualified Social Worker registered with Social Work England and have significant post‑qualification experience within frontline child protection services.

You will be an experienced, reflective and highly skilled practitioner with a strong understanding of safeguarding, risk and child protection processes. You will be able to analyse complex information, exercise sound professional judgement and work collaboratively with children, families and partner agencies to achieve positive outcomes.

You will be able to demonstrate:

• Significant experience of identifying and assessing complex needs, balancing and managing risk, and developing effective child protection interventions and plans.
• Strong critical thinking skills and the ability to evaluate and triangulate information from multiple agencies and disciplines to assess the likelihood of significant harm, including in situations involving contextual, cumulative or complex harm and where information may be incomplete or ambiguous.
• Experience of supporting frontline social workers through advice, guidance, mentoring and constructive challenge.
• The ability to influence practice and support professional development through expertise, coaching and partnership working rather than direct line management.
• Experience of leading and chairing multi‑agency meetings where complex safeguarding decisions are required.
• Excellent communication, interpersonal and relationship‑building skills.
• A commitment to continuous learning, service improvement and achieving the best possible outcomes for children and families.
• The ability to work from a variety of locations and travel independently across the county.

Benefits

• up to £56,054, plus a £2,000 market supplement
• generous local government benefits package
• wellbeing package to cover all aspects of wellbeing both in and out of work, which can also be accessed by your family
• £2k market supplement
• 6 days of protected time each year to support in maintaining your Continuous Professional Development
• relocation package (eligibility applies)
• Refer a Friend Scheme where if you refer another Social Worker to us who is subsequently employed by us as a result of that introduction, we’ll pay you an introduction fee of £350
• Cambridgeshire Academy for Reaching Excellence (CARE) who will support your development, enabling you to become the best practitioner you can be

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

We are proud to serve the diverse communities of Cambridgeshire and want our workforce to be reflective of this diversity, which we firmly believe benefits our colleagues, the organisation and our communities. If you don’t meet every single requirement in the job role but think this could be you, please don’t be put off. We are committed to building a workplace that is compassionate and inclusive as well as diverse, so if you think you could be a good candidate for this role please consider applying and speak to the recruiting manager if you have any questions.

Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, along with our employee network 'IDEAL' and self‑organised peer support groups help us to foster an inclusive, supportive and safe working environment where people feel valued, respected, and empowered. We collect relevant diversity data for monitoring as part of the recruitment process to understand the diversity of our applicants and monitor any trends throughout the recruitment processes so that we can take meaningful action.

We are proud to be a Disability Confident Leader. We fully support providing reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process, as well as when you join us, and we encourage candidates to contact the Hiring Manager, whose details can be found in the advert, to discuss any adjustment needs. Through a Guaranteed Interview Scheme, we will offer an interview to all applicants who disclose a disability and meet the essential criteria for a job vacancy.

Please note that we are not accepting applications from candidates living overseas who require sponsorship to move to the UK.