Child Safeguarding Practitioner

The post holder will join the Corporate Safeguarding Team to help deliver high-quality safeguarding services for children and young people and adults under the "Think Family" agenda, with an emphasis on Awaken (violence reduction/serious violence response) and Youth Justice pathways. This role is key in ensuring the Trust fulfils its statutory safeguarding responsibilities according to the Children Act 1989/2004 and Working Together guidance, supporting better outcomes for vulnerable children, including those at risk of exploitation, serious violence, or criminal justice involvement.

Main duties of the job

Responsibilities include:

Offering specialist safeguarding advice and support to Trust staff, including daily safeguarding supervision for others.

Enhancing connections between health services, Youth Justice Services, child exploitation teams, and multi-agency safeguarding partners.

Assisting with the implementation of the Awaken programme and related violence reduction initiatives.

Participating in multi-agency safeguarding efforts, such as strategy discussions and case reviews.

Helping develop best practices and facilitating shared learning to shape services and initiatives that address local needs.

Person specification

Education and Qualification

Essential

• A Registered General Nurse (Adult or Child), a Registered Midwife, or an individual holding a relevant first-level degree with at least 3 years' experience working in safeguarding.
• Evidence of continued professional development including safeguarding specific learning and training children such as child protection, exploitation, youth justice, domestic abuse, serious violence, trauma-informed practice, teaching or supervision.

Desirable

• Has attended Safeguarding Supervision Course

Experience and Knowledge

Essential

• Experience of working with children, young people, families or vulnerable adults in health, social care, safeguarding, youth justice or a multi-agency setting.
• Understanding of the role of universal services, specialist services and multi-agency partnership arrangements in supporting children, young people and adults at risk
• Experience in dealing with highly emotive and confidential information
• Experience of identifying and responding to safeguarding concerns including abuse, neglect, exploitation, contextual safeguarding and serious youth violence.
• Experience in supporting staff in the management of safeguarding cases and experience of working across statutory bodies and organisations.
• Knowledge of safeguarding children legislation, statutory guidance and local safeguarding partnership arrangements, including the Children Act 1989/2004, Working Together guidance, information sharing, consent, confidentiality, GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.
• Family approach and the impact of adult vulnerabilities on children and young people.

Desirable

• Knowledge of Awaken or equivalent serious violence/violence reduction pathway, contextual safeguarding, exploitation, youth justice or trauma-informed practice.
• Experience contributing to safeguarding audits, reviews, action plans, service improvement or learning from incidents.

Skills and Ability

Essential

• Excellent oral and written communication skills and an ability to communicate effectively with people who use Trust services, carers, families, and multi-agency partners.
• Compassionate, resilient, reflective and professionally curious, with a commitment to equality, diversity, inclusion, anti-discriminatory practice and Trust values.
• Able to provide safeguarding advice, support and supervision to staff. Able to contribute to safeguarding assessments, safety planning, risk management, strategy discussions, case conferences and multi-agency meetings.,
• Able to analyse safeguarding information, identify risk and protective factors and support proportionate decision-making.
• Demonstrates the capacity to work independently, with the skills to effectively plan, prioritise, and manage a diverse safeguarding workload within a dynamic and occasionally unpredictable setting.
• Ability to influence, negotiate and professionally challenge to internal and external partners in a constructive and appropriate manner where required and demonstrate professional credibility with colleagues

About the employer

Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is situated on the west coast of Lancashire, with services covering the local authority areas of Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre. The Trust is part of the Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care System (ICS) supporting a population of around 1.6 million people.

We have three main hospitals providing acute services to around 330,000 local residents. The organisation also provides specialist tertiary care for cardiac and haematology services, delivers community health services to over 445,000 residents including those in North Lancashire and hosts the National Artificial Eye Service across England. Plus, we provide urgent and emergency care services to an estimated 18 million people who visit the seaside resort each year. We employ over 7000 people from 68 different countries.

We welcome and encourage application from anyone with protected characteristics, as well as supporting reservists and Veterans who are looking for a rewarding and challenging career within the NHS.

Blackpool Teaching Hospitals encourages flexible working in all our roles to support staff in maintaining healthy home-life balance. Working patterns such as: part time working, self-rostering, compressed hours, annualised hours, term time, reverse term time and flexi time working can be explored.