SENIOR SAFEGUARDING POST (PART TIME)

At Gateshead our vision is that all children and families, regardless of their background, are at the heart of everything we do – ensuring all children can thrive and meet their full potential.
Our plans for 2024 reflect this vision and ambition! We will have an even greater focus on embedding trauma informed approaches, and inclusive practice, across all of our services as we believe that this delivers the best outcomes for children and young people. We are committed to continuing to develop services which are integrated and joined up through our family hubs and that we maintain our focus on supporting the most vulnerable children on the edge of care to support them to remain safely living within their family networks.

We are seeking applications for the post of Senior Safeguarding Clerk in the Safeguarding Children Unit (SCU).
The post is part time. Days/hours to be agreed.
The SCU is responsible for chairing Child Protection Conferences, Children in Our Care Reviews, Foster Care Reviews, Pre-Secure and Secure Reviews, Complex Abuse Meetings and Allegation Management Meetings which have been convened by the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO).
You will be responsible for the provision of an efficient administration and minuting service to ensure the efficient running of SCU.
Key responsibilities of this post include the arranging of meetings by ensuring invitation letters are distributed within procedural timescales.
You will be required to attend Initial and Review Child Protection Conferences, LADO Strategy Meetings and other statutory meetings to minute (using a laptop in the meeting) and produce accurate records following discussion.
You will ensure child protection plans and all minutes from meetings are produced and distributed within procedural timescales.
You will be required to ensure that accurate data is inputted onto our Mosaic system following all Child Protection Conferences and LADO Strategy Meetings, maintaining appropriate records on the social care database, adhering to national and LA guidance on confidentiality and information-sharing.
You would also be responsible for administrative tasks relating to the arrangement of the Foster Carers Annual Reviews.
You will be required to assist the Business Support Manager in the monitoring of Business Support procedures.
You will have responsibility for maintaining and updating manual and computerised information systems ensuring information used by the service is accurate and to assist with the auditing of data quality.
It is essential that you have experience in convening, servicing and minuting meetings.
You must be able to work on own initiative, organise and prioritise your workloads to ensure timescales are met.
You must have comprehensive working knowledge of word processing and spreadsheet systems.
You must have effective
written and oral communication skills demonstrating a high standard of accuracy.
You must be able to input, retrieve, collate and present information from computerised and manual systems and have excellent IT and typing skills.
5 GCSEs at Grade C or above or grades (1-9) or equivalent qualification and/or experience is essential.
Experience of working in a children’s social care, or health environment would be desirable but is not essential.