Safeguarding Support Officer

A fantastic opportunity has arisen for a part time Safeguarding Support Officer within our Clients  Quality Assurance Service Dept. As a Safeguarding Support Officer, you will arrange multi-agency Child Protection Conferences.

Safeguarding Business Support Officers are responsible for sending out conference invitations, typing and distributing minutes on a laptop, ensuring confidential information is stored/shared using Excel, Outlook and Word.   You will be the first line of contact for external and internal partners in relation to Child Protection Conferences, Children Looked After Reviews and other complex meetings.

You will have extensive administrative experience, which includes speed typing, and various Microsoft packages, as well as knowledge of GDPR.  You will ideally have experience of taking minutes on a laptop, though this is not essential as our minute taking is very different to the usual trained style,

However, a fast typing speed is a must and you will need to be sufficiently confident to capture discussions taking place which could be with up to 12 professionals engaged in the meeting.

Main Accountabilities

• Coordinate the organization of Reviews of Children Looked After by the Local Authority
• Coordinate Initial and Review Child Protection Conferences, including taking specialist minutes at these multi-agencies (usually Children’s Social Care, Police, Health and Education) complex meetings
• To ensure the Independent Reviewing Service and the Child Protection Service meets statutory timescales
• To attend multi-agency meetings and conferences, circulate documents and follow up action as necessary
• To establish and maintain good client/professional relationships both within the organization and our professional partners by ensuring timely communication and critical updates regarding Looked After Children Reviews, Child Protection Conferences, and other complex multi-agency meetings, and procedures
• To maintain data collection systems to ensure data quality and accuracy in preparation of monthly quality assurance monitoring reports and returns
• To take accurate specialist minutes of complex multi-agency meetings and then produce records which reflect the main discussion but précis the information disclosed
• To be the first line of contact for external and internal partners in relation to the arrangements of Child Protection Conferences, Looked After Children Reviews, and other complex meetings
• To update partner agencies of children subject to Child Protection Plans, and Children Looked After ensuring data security is maintained
• Inputting of all invoices pertaining to the Safeguarding & Quality Assurance Unit
• To manage own workload in relation to data improvement efforts within the Independent Reviewing Service and Child Protection Service managed systems
• To work flexibly, adapt and develop the role as necessary to meet service needs
• To undertake any other tasks relevant to the Children’s Safeguarding and Quality Assurance Unit as required
• Supporting the smooth operational running of the Children’s Safeguarding and Quality Assurance Unit, including the support of key posts: Head of Service for Safeguarding and Quality Assurance; Complaints Manager; Child Protection Chair, Independent Reviewing Officers, Independent Reviewing Manager & Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO)

Person Specification

Education, Training and Experience

Demonstrable experience providing office administration and service support (essential)
Excellent written and verbal communication skills (essential)
Experience of working and communicating with multiagency organizations, internal staff and/or members of the public (essential)
Creating and maintaining computerized and manual information management systems (essential)
Experience of agenda planning, co-ordination and monitoring (essential)
Experience of attending and supporting multi-professional complex meetings (essential)
Understanding of good customer service particularly in relation to inter-agency partnerships (essential)
Knowledge of issues relating to data protection, data security, and confidentiality (essential)
Knowledge of and commitment to Equality and Diversity (essential)
Some knowledge of local government (desirable)
Educated to GCSE (grades A-C) or equivalent level with a good level of numeracy and literacy (essential)
Office skill based qualifications such as RSA, Pitman, NVQ Business (essential)

General & Specific Knowledge

Well-developed written and oral communication skills and demonstration of attention to detail (essential)
Ability to handle sensitive and confidential information appropriately (essential)
Proven skills taking specialized minutes at complex multi professional meetings (essential)
Keyboard proficiency and good working knowledge of Microsoft Office software with the ability to provide information through electronic media, internet and intranet. Ability to learn and work on bespoke software (essential)
Proven accuracy in dealing with data and correspondence (essential)
Ability to import, export  writing queries and reports to extract information and use to write specialist reports for use in court and conference (essential)
Ability to project manage own workload and use own initiative in order to meet tight deadlines, while maintaining accuracy and quality of output (essential)

Interested? Please Apply!