Senior Nurse Safeguarding Children

Please see full Job Description attached. This post is a specialist role and requires specialist knowledge regarding safeguarding children practice. The professional will work with a high degree of autonomy and lead the safeguarding agenda across the Trust, providing support, advice, guidance, and supervision to staff, to empower them to safeguard children within their own practice. The Senior Nurse Safeguarding Children role provides support from a leadership and operational perspective to the Trust, ensuring that the statutory requirements for the organisation are upheld.

It is crucial that the practitioner works with a Think Family and child-centred approach, with knowledge and understanding of the key and current evidence-base, the current local and national themes from learning, leading on the development and delivery of training, briefing sessions, and innovative methods to embed learning. Quality assurance is integral to this role, to ensure ongoing improvement, which will be performed internally within the organisation and also often takes place collaboratively with the Safeguarding Partnerships.

It is essential that the post holder works in close collaboration with the Named Professionals for Safeguarding, the safeguarding children team, and the wider teams within the Trust. The role also involves working closely with members of the multi-agency safeguarding partnership teams and key stakeholders across the locality, to meet local safeguarding priorities.

The Senior Nurse Safeguarding Children is a senior role within the organisation and therefore is responsible for supporting the embedding of safeguarding strategy, leading on the development of policies, and contributing to wider clinical policies, where appropriate. The key role of the Senior Nurse Safeguarding Children is to support staff, equip them with the knowledge and skills, to empower them to independently safeguard children.

To work collaboratively, as an integral member of the safeguarding children team, to empower staff and equip them with the skills and knowledge to safeguard children. This is in line with their statutory responsibilities. To work collaboratively with the wider safeguarding teams within the Trust and locally. To provide highly specialised safeguarding advice, guidance, and support on all aspects of safeguarding children to health staff within County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust.

To provide support around highly complex safeguarding situations, including, for example, perplexing presentations and fabricated and induced illness, child exploitation, and neglect. To work with the Named Nurse Safeguarding Children and Named Midwife Safeguarding, to ensure that robust procedures for Safeguarding Children are implemented. Deliver a high quality of safeguarding training, education, and development to staff members within the Trust and collaborating with the local Partners to provide multi-agency training, education, and development.

To work with the Named Nurse Safeguarding Children & Named Midwife Safeguarding to develop the Safeguarding Children Training Strategy. Demonstrate a specialised knowledge of cumulative harm within safeguarding practice, to inform critical analysis and evaluation. Awareness of the escalation process, when disagreements occur within the organisation and also with partners, applying the appropriate tools and resources, to ensure a consistent, respectful, and confident approach to professional disagreement/challenge; whilst advocating a child-focused and Think Family approach, which is trauma-informed.

To support County Durham and Darlington Foundation Trusts function in the delivery of MASH, MAPPA, and MARAC, attending meetings and providing robust analysis and appropriate sharing of information, where appropriate. Demonstrate the ability to recognise areas of risk, including within areas, which may impact on the safety of children/young people, service users, and staff, who are accessing the organisation. Supporting in the development of robust risk management plans, to safeguard in this instance.

To ensure that Local Safeguarding Partnership Procedures; CDDFT NHS Safeguarding Children Procedures; current and new legislation; learning from incidents and Safeguarding Children Practice Reviews are embedded throughout all training methods and supervision. To undertake the planning and development of training packages, which are evidence-based and correlate to current learning.