Senior Safeguarding Advisor

The role of Senior Safeguarding Advisor is to provide high quality support to the Safeguarding Strategy and Assurance Lead and the wider organisation, to ensure the organisation meets its regulatory responsibilities to safeguard children, young people and vulnerable adults. You will provide specialist advice and consultation across the multi-disciplinary team to support children who are looked after, liaising with external professionals to support liberty protection safeguards and mental capacity.

The post holder will apply social work values, theory, knowledge and skills required to support safety and wellbeing for children and young adults with complex neurodisability and acquired brain injuries. You will play a key role in promoting excellent professional practice within the organisation, providing advice, support, training, 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

• 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.
• Support the organisation to meet statutory duties for Looked After Children, including oversight of care planning standards and close liaison with external professionals.
• Provide specialist advice and consultation to the wider MDT for CLA, LPS, DOLS and MCA, keeping abreast of policy and national changes.
• Ensure any CYP in the assessment stage have their social care status and safeguarding concerns identified and managed, working closely with external partners.
• Provide advice underpinned by specialist knowledge to the organisation on Looked After Children, safeguarding children and vulnerable adults, incorporating local and national guidance and statutory regulations.
• Lead the high-quality delivery of the organisation’s mandatory safeguarding training programme.
• Create and/or utilise opportunities for recordable Safeguarding Supervision.
• Provide Safeguarding Supervision to individuals or groups, ensuring appropriate reflective practice is embedded.
• Support analysis of regulatory compliance data, against safeguarding training and supervision.
• Effectively communicate local safeguarding knowledge, research and findings from audits, challenge poor practice and address areas where there is an identified training/development opportunity.
• Lead on assigned safeguarding investigations and ensure subsequent learning is embedded and practice developed as a result.
• Support overview of incident management and trend., reporting information into Clinical Governance meetings.
• Facilitate and contribute to safeguarding audits, demonstrating and sharing your knowledge of how to implement and audit the effectiveness of safeguarding/child protection services on an organisational level against current national guidelines and quality standards.
• Facilitate and contribute to the development of safeguarding and other relevant policies, demonstrating and sharing your knowledge of how to implement effective safeguarding/child protection services on an organisational level against current national guidelines and quality standards.
• Cover for the absence of the safeguarding Strategy and Assurance Lead as required.
• To undertake other or additional duties that are within your skills and abilities, as the organisation may reasonably require from time to time.

Interview Date: TBC

If you would like to discuss the role, please contact the Recruitment & Compliance Team, on 01737 365 880 or email: recruitment@thechildrenstrust.org.uk

For more information, a copy of the candidate briefing pack and application form please click here.

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY – ‘How to Apply’

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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.

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.

Boasting a beautiful 24-acre site in Surrey, we are located just outside of London, close to the M25 (accessible via Junction 8, A217 to Tadworth) and easily accessible via National Rail, by way of: Clapham Junction, Sutton, and Epsom.

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.

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.

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.