About us

Hillingdon Council: Putting our Residents first.

Hillingdon is London's second largest borough. Our staff live across the area and beyond, with our main council offices at the Civic Centre in the heart of vibrant Uxbridge town centre. Putting our residents first is at the heart of everything we do, and we are embarking on an ambitious plan to modernise our service offering, while sustaining the high-quality delivery.

Our innovative and dynamic Social Work Department is committed to providing high-quality, child focused services that both keeps children safe and allows our practitioners the ability to develop their practice, to innovate and to progress in their careers.

About the role

We have an immediate opening for a Safeguarding Manager who will lead the Safeguarding service consisting of Independent Reviewing Managers and Child Protection Advisors. This position reports to the Director of Safeguarding, Quality Assurance and Partnership and it ensures high level delivery of the independent reviews for Looked after children and effective Child Protection conferences. This is a key role in promoting good practice in the service and partner agencies, advocating for our children and families, advising the leadership of the service and quality assuring the work of various teams. The position holder has 15 direct reports who are experienced and competent professionals. To be successful in this role, you must have experience of people management and leadership in a Social Work role, you will have experience of successfully chairing complex professional meetings, leading and developing multi-agency programmes at a senior level, including a proven track record of having influenced and negotiated successfully at a senior level across agencies, disciplines or sectors.

Main aspects of the role

• To ensure that the Independent Reviewing service is delivered as per national and local regulations and procedures
• To work closely with other parts of the service and the partnership to pre-empt and resolve disputes relating to the Independent Reviews and Child Protection Conferences
• To escalate any patterns and issues identified in the service

• To ensure children and family participation is actively encouraged and monitored to promote coproduction and joint planning
• To promote and support participation of partner agencies to conferences and reviews

• Co-ordinate and have oversight of the CPA consultation process to ensure robust scrutiny of thresholds
• To Quality Assure Child Protection conferences and Looked After Children Reviews alongside monitoring timeliness, cancelations of meetings and children's participation. This will include direct observation, file review and feedback
• Through regular review and scrutiny, to ensure that themes and areas of focus are identified and they are contributing to the service delivery

• To take responsibility for the effective management of the allocated budget for the service.

What Will Joining Hillingdon Mean for Me?

We want you to be a real part of the change we're making here in Hillingdon for our children and families. We understand the need to nurture and support colleagues and from day one you will be welcomed into our team. You will receive not just induction; you will be welcomed to your team and will have around you colleagues who will help and support at the beginning of your journey with us and continue to provide on the job support at all times. You will have access to a wide range of training, learning and development but you will also be able to share your knowledge and expertise with others, to practice in an innovative way knowing you have behind you a whole service that understands that social work is not static, that we are always adapting, learning and responding to the context in which we operate.

We recognise potential and talent and thus, your career ambitions and aspirations will always be supported and promoted and we will be walking alongside you in your development and achieving your ambitions. There are many ways to develop both personally and professionally with a clear pathway for progression which may include leadership development programmes or a more informal way of learning and growing professionally.

We have a track record of achieving this for our colleagues, and many of our managers and leaders who started in the Team grew and were promoted to their current positions, some of them achieving national recognition for their skills, talent and vision.

You will join a team where your voice will always be heard and listened to. Here, we are all working together to achieve our ambitions and goals for our children, families and colleagues by promoting inclusiveness and encouraging direct communications across levels of leadership and management and by acknowledging that we all have an important contribution to make in transforming the way we work, transforming the service offer and most important, transforming the lives of children and families who always come first.

About You

You will be Degree level qualified with relevant professional qualification or equivalents egg Diploma in Social Work and registered with SW England. You will have at least 5 years management experience, ideally with a management qualification or with the willingness to undertake such qualifications to enhance your knowledge of the role.

You will be innovative and creative with a willingness to explore new models of working to improve the outcomes for our service users. Moreover, you will be a highly motivated person who is able to build strong relationships to deliver the best possible outcomes for vulnerable people.

You will understand and share our passion for good outcomes for children, for innovative, inclusive practice and for working in partnership with colleagues in and outside the organisation. You will have a good appreciation of our role in achieving good outcomes, and at the same time as custodians to the public purse and thus good financial sense is required.

You will be the type of person who creates, maintains and promotes relationship based practice, who can support, encourage and constructively challenge at all levels in a way that promotes positive action and meaningful outcomes.

Please note that the role is subject to enhance DBS checks and it is mandatory that you join the online renewal service

Additional information

We understand that work satisfaction is linked to many things in addition to the salary. In this role you will receive a competitive salary between £63k and £68k but also a range of Company benefits:

• local government average salary pension scheme
• Free on-site parking
• a 36-hour week for all full-time staff
• generous holiday entitlement up to 36 days a year depending on experience
• career breaks
• hybrid working and flexible working hours
• season ticket loan
• access to a Credit Union
• access to a wide range of trainings, courses and other types of professional development
• discount on a variety of Adult Education courses run by the Council
• payment of professional fees where these are required

We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults.

Due to an expected high volume of applications, we could close this role early, we therefore recommend you apply as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.