Safeguarding Strategy and Assurance Lead

The Children's Trust; United Kingdom; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 60,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading charity for children's welfare in the UK is seeking a Safeguarding Strategy and Assurance Lead. This role focuses on the strategic and operational aspects of safeguarding for children and vulnerable adults. Responsibilities include shaping safeguarding practices, providing expert advice, and collaborating with local authorities. The ideal candidate will have advanced safeguarding skills, legal literacy of relevant laws, and experience advocating for children’s welfare. A supportive environment and various benefits await the successful candidate.

Benefits

Flexible benefits platform

On-site nursery

Free eye tests

Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Pay

Career development opportunities

Free on-site parking

Staff accommodation (subject to availability)

Subsidised cafeteria

Shuttle service from Epsom and Sutton train stations

Qualifications

• Proven experience in safeguarding children and vulnerable adults.
• Ability to advocate for and implement safeguarding policies.
• Strong understanding of statutory safeguarding regulations.

Responsibilities

• Shape collaborative safeguarding practices across services.
• Provide expert operational and strategic advice.
• Lead partnerships with local authorities and safeguarding boards.

Skills

Advanced skills in safeguarding

Legal literacy of safeguarding laws

Expertise in child protection

Ability to communicate effectively

Education

Relevant degree or qualification in social work or related field

Job description

Safeguarding Strategy and Assurance Lead

The role of Safeguarding Strategy and Assurance Lead is to continue to shape collaborative working practices across clinical services to provide consistent and robust standards of safeguarding. You will ensure that recommendations from regulatory and professionals safeguarding standards are implemented. You will work in partnership with the Designated Safeguarding Lead for The Children's Trust school and be fully supported by the Senior Leadership Team who understand the need to foster a culture of safeguarding and who understand the challenges.

This will be a key role in ensuring quality safeguarding for all children and adults at risk. Alongside the Designated Safeguarding Lead for school, you will support all activities necessary to ensure the organisation meets its responsibilities to safeguard children and young people. You will be strategic in nature but with an operational focus, who will work closely with professionals and partner organisations to deliver a comprehensive safeguarding function. This role is both inward and outward facing, being a visible presence in the clinical setting as well as being a strategic and collaborative leader with various stakeholders.

You will play a key role in promoting excellent professional practice within the organisation, providing advice, support, supervision and expertise for fellow professionals and ensure safeguarding training and supervision is in place from board to floor.

This role is not open to sponsorship.

Staff benefits include shuttle bus, and more... Read more below.

Role Requirements

• Demonstrate advanced skills and competencies to influence the pathways of care in the safeguarding of children, young people and vulnerable adults. The role requires a high level of legal literacy of the Children Act, Care Act, Mental Capacity Act, Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards and family law that interface with the safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults' agenda.
• Demonstrate advanced skill and competencies to influence pathways of care in safeguarding children and vulnerable adults with expert advice and co-ordination for safeguarding. You will work closely with our teams to ensure The Children's Trust meet its statutory responsibilities to protect the welfare of children and vulnerable adults.
• Provide expert operational and strategic advice underpinned by highly developed specialist knowledge to the organisation on safeguarding children and vulnerable adults, incorporating local and national policy and statutory regulations.
• Work as part of a dynamic team in delivering an effective service, supporting managers and staff across The Children's Trust in the areas of safeguarding children and vulnerable adults.
• Lead on partnership working with colleagues in local authorities and safeguarding partner boards.
• Maintain knowledge and expertise on national policy in relation to safeguarding children and vulnerable adults across The Children's Trust providing quality assurance and ensuring consistency of response across the safeguarding systems.
• Ensure there are effective mechanisms to implement national recommendations from emergent safeguarding work across The Children's Trust when relevant.
• Play a key role in policy and service development and its implementation across the teams, working with others to achieve The Children's Trust objectives.
• Ensure there is a robust safeguarding training strategy and programme in place to meet all educational and training requirements which meets local and national standards.
• Provide, receive and analyse complex and sensitive information, ensuring that frequent exposure to highly distressing information is managed effectively and sensitively.
• Respond to enquiries regarding safeguarding issues from colleagues nationally and other partner agencies.
• Able to effectively communicate local safeguarding knowledge, research and findings from audits, challenge poor practice and address areas where there is an identified training/development opportunity.
• Facilitate and contribute to safeguarding audits, demonstrating and sharing your knowledge of how to implement and audit the effectiveness of safeguarding/child

Contact

If you would like to discuss the role, please contact the Recruitment & Compliance Team, on 01737 365 880 or email: [e-mail]

Terms and Conditions

PLEASE NOTE: The Children's Trust Application Form MUST be completed and submitted, for your application to be considered. As part of the shortlisting process, gaps in employment will be examined and further explored during the interview process.

Strictly no agencies, please.

As we often receive high levels of applicants for our roles, we regret that we will only be able to contact those applicants who are shortlisted for interviews. Therefore, if you have not heard from us within 2 weeks of the closing date, please assume you have not been shortlisted for an interview on this occasion.

Equal Opportunity Employer

To help us achieve our ambition to give children and young people with brain injury and neurodisability the opportunity to live the best life possible, we want to accurately reflect the UK's diverse population. We want equity, diversity, and inclusion to be at the heart of everything we do, and our people, services, and culture to reflect the diverse needs of all. Through our diversity and inclusion strategy, we have made a commitment to increase the diversity of our charity and create an inclusive culture. We have networks across the organisation working to ensure that these aims are met - including an LGBTQIA2S+ group, Ethnic Diversity Group, and Spark - our broad EDI group. Read more about our EDI work here. We welcome applications from all who share our ambition regardless of background. We will strive to ensure that any reasonable adjustments are made in respect of interview and working arrangements.

Online Searches

In accordance with statutory safeguarding and child protection guidance, online searches will be conducted for shortlisted candidates before interview. The online searches will be conducted by a person who is independent of the interview and selection process and will focus on relevant information returned via searches of the candidate's name (and variations thereof). Social media searches will be limited to professional platforms such as LinkedIn. Any concerns relating to suitability for work with children and young people will be forwarded to the interview panel, for discussion during the interview.

Rehabilitation of Offenders

Many roles at The Children's Trust are exempt from the provisions of Section 4 (2) of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, by virtue of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (as amended in 2013 and 2020) and as such, are subject to an Enhanced DBS check. Successful applicants will be required to complete an Enhanced Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) check, which will disclose all unspent convictions and adult cautions and any spent convictions or adult cautions that would not be protected. The exceptions to this are our retail roles within The Children's Trust shops, which are subject to Basic DBS checks which will disclose unspent convictions or adult cautions.

About Us

The Children's Trust is the UK's leading charity for children with acquired brain injury, providing expert rehabilitation, education, therapy, and care at our national specialist centre in Tadworth, and to children and their families across the UK, via our Brain Injury Community Service.

Staff Benefits

The work we do is highly rewarding, and in addition to an attractive salary, we offer a valuable range of benefits, including our staff flexible benefits platform, on-site nursery, free eye tests, enhanced Maternity and Paternity Pay, time out days for those experiencing menopause symptoms and time off for gender reassignment. We also offer additional annual leave days for those with long service, with entitlements ranging from 35 to 41 days (including bank holidays) depending on your length of service. Other benefits include free on-site parking; a staff shuttle service from Epsom and Sutton train stations to Tadworth Court, subsidised cafeteria, on-site staff accommodation (subject to availability), the ability to retain your NHS pension (where applicable), Teacher's pension (where applicable) or the opportunity to join an alternative scheme, and the opportunity to develop your career in a supportive and collaborative environment.