Child Safeguarding Advisor

Location: Cross site between Lewisham and Woolwich, South East London

Proposed start date: ASAP

Duration: This is a temporary role for 6 months and likely to be longer

Sector: Healthcare

Working environment: Hospital

Pay Rates: 

£29.00-£35 paye inclusive of holiday pay per hour

All of the rates are depending on skill and experience.

Band: 7 Working Days and Hours: 37.5 hours a week, Monday to Friday (on site each day), 9am to 5pm

Job Summary: 

The Safeguarding Advisor needs to be an experienced specialist practitioner with in-depth knowledge of child protection and advanced analytical skills for safeguarding children acquired through specialist courses and experiential learning from interagency work.

The role will include and skill required: 

• Work as part of a Team member in the daily screening emergency department attendances, collaborating with internal / external professionals and attending the weekly multi-disciplinary meeting associated with emergency department attendances. 
• To advise and support staff in complex cases and to work closely with the Trust Named Safeguarding Children Professionals to ensure that appropriate assessment of risks are undertaken in order to improve outcomes for vulnerable/child protection children/families. 
• The post holder will work as part of a dynamic multi-agency team assessing notifications and referrals regarding children aged 0-18 that are received by Multi- Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH). The MASH process includes searching for and collating health information from a range of NHS providers. 
• The post hold will work across acute and community sites as well as other multiagency professionals working to safeguard children. 
• The post holder will work with the Safeguarding team to deliver safeguarding training in line with Intercollegiate Guidance.
• The post holder will work with the Safeguarding team to deliver safeguarding supervision in one to one, group and reflective learning forums. 
• The post holder will have either supervision or line management responsibility for a Safeguarding Coordinator 
• Highlight challenges and document poor practice. 
• Provide advice and support on all matters relating to Child Protection and vulnerable families while implementing evidence-based practice. 
• Disseminate information to promote good practice. 
• Engage fully in the delivery of safeguarding training. 
• Ensure robust safeguarding supervision is implemented within Trust Services in accordance with the Trust safeguarding supervision policy. 
• Provide safeguarding supervision, consultation, professional advice and guidance to staff and to sensitively guide and support staff working with issues related to vulnerable families and child protection. 
• Ensure that the child protection supervision contract is discussed and signed by the supervisor and practitioner. 
• To facilitate regular experiential learning forums to share good practice and learn lessons from research around vulnerable families and child protection issues. 
• Work in partnership with Trust Team managers, ensuring they are aware of issues within clinical practice relevant to safeguarding vulnerable families which impact upon workloads, highlighting areas of clinical risk and working in partnership to ensure clinical governance and performance management issues are addressed. 
• Attend bi-weekly Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARAC) and ensure communication of actions / risk to practitioners. 
• Record, Interpret and present health information and issues that can impact on the risk or needs assessment of child/children from a range of health perspectives. This may involve disclosing relevant information on the parents or carers in ensuring the information is processed fairly and proportionately. 
• Identify service gaps and issues relating to effective clinical pathways and /or cross boundary arrangements. Escalate evidence of ineffective safeguarding arrangements within the Trust. 
• Immediately report to the Named Professionals when issues require escalation or where the case is of likely to become subject to press or public interest. 
• Scope local needs of vulnerable families and work in collaboration with frontline staff and the Safeguarding team to develop and implement strategies for supporting vulnerable families. 
• In collaboration with the Clinical Governance Department, undertake child protection quality and audit monitoring. 
• Highlight, challenge and document poor practice. This will involve the adoption of all evidence based approach to supervision and professional development, facilitating inter-agency child safeguarding, contextual safeguarding and Think Family training, selecting and supporting a range of learning opportunities for staff and students relevant to their level of practice and expertise.
• Develop quality assurance and audit programmes to monitor and maintain quality of supervision in line with the clinical governance principles. 
• Ensure staff keep accurate and comprehensive records; including reports for case conferences and in preparation for court attendance, plus any other appropriate documentation. 
• Audit and review staff records during supervision sessions, highlighting any challenges to staff and managers as appropriate. 
• Support staff in the completion of their court reports. 
• Provide accessible support and supervision for staff working in potentially high risk situations. 
• Develop dynamic networks and to communicate and negotiate effectively with Trust staff, Community Care Service Providers, Social Care and other relevant agencies engaged in promoting the wellbeing of children and families. 
• Raise manager’s awareness of Safeguarding poor practice of staff and associated risks and to support managers in their performance management strategies in line with clinical governance agendas.