Contextual Safeguarding Practice Lead – Children and Families Services

Hackney’s Children and Families Services offer visionary leadership, a culture of continuous learning and a climate for innovation. We are committed to outcomes for our children and families, recognising the impact of discrimination, disadvantage that many of our families experience. For these reasons, systemic, trauma informed and anti racist practice (STAR) is our practice model ensuring a social justice approach whilst creating change. We will offer exciting leadership learning and development opportunities to embed STAR and expect you to lead exemplary anti-racist, trauma informed and systemic services.

As the Contextual Safeguarding Practice Lead, you will contribute to the shaping of a confident, professional and respectful service that always places children at the centre of practice. Your strong leadership skills will enable you to engage social workers, managers, senior leads to embed the very best practice based upon research, quality assurance and feedback from our children, families to ensure that we achieve the very best outcomes for children in Hackney. You will have an in depth understanding of risk and harm outside of the home, the interplay with intra-familial risk, missing children and contextual safeguarding interventions.

You will be responsible and accountable for ensuring that learning is systematically embedded, contribute to quality assurance of practice and support strategic change in order that our services for Children and Families become outstanding.

As part of our journey to be anti-racist we want our workforce to represent the community we serve and embrace diverse talent so we strongly encourage applications from Black and Global Majority Ethnic backgrounds.

A strong practitioner and leader with a proven capacity to create service wide change in the interests of children and families, you will be dedicated to our STAR approach, committed to child centred safeguarding practices and to identifying and challenging discrimination and racism. You will be creative, analytical and reflective and be willing to work hard to improve outcomes for children and young people. You will have excellent communication, negotiation and diplomacy skills to effectively create change.

You are required to hold a relevant social work qualification or equivalent, be registered with Social Work England, combined with substantive experience of supervising and leading practice.

An enhanced DBS check is required.

Join our drop in event

We invite you to join us for an informal conversation on Monday 24th February at 5.30pm and meet with our Director and senior managers. Book your free place on https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1237620649679/

If you are unable to attend the online drop in and would like to speak to a manager to discuss this opportunity, please contact cfs.recruitment@hackney.gov.uk

As a Council, our most outstanding asset is our staff, who are highly dedicated to serving our residents and committed to our goals as an organisation.

If you want to work in a place where you can represent our values so we achieve the best for our residents, please click on the apply button below.

We operate a fair and open anonymous selection process. Therefore, we do not accept supporting statements or CV’s.

To proceed with your application, you will need to create an account and submit your application.

As part of the application process, you will need to complete a number of competency based questions. These questions allow you to demonstrate your suitability for the role and provide examples of your skills, knowledge and experience outlined in the job description.

We understand the benefits of using AI in the workplace. However, if you are thinking of using this tool to submit your application, we ask you to think about what value it will add. AI tools tend to lack the personal touch and authenticity we value in candidates. We encourage you to showcase your unique knowledge and skills using your own voice.

Closing date for applications: 02 March 2025

Interview date(s): 03 April 2025

We are also working towards our vision, which is to be a place for everyone; where residents and staff can be proud; a place that celebrates diversity and where everyone can feel valued, included and involved. In order to achieve this, we look for people who are: Proud; Ambitious; Pioneering; Open; Proactive; Inclusive.

Hackney Council works to eradicate discrimination on the basis of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. We also recognise that people can be disadvantaged by their social and economic circumstances, so we will also work to eliminate discrimination and disadvantage caused by social class. We also welcome those interested in flexible working. We particularly welcome applications from disabled people, as this group is currently under represented in our workforce.

The Council has a dedicated employment support service (Hackney Works), which offers Hackney residents guidance in relation to applying for jobs. If you are thinking about applying for a job, please contact the Hackney Works team to find out what support is available: hackneyworks@hackney.gov.uk