Job overview

We are seeking an experienced senior nurse to join our Nursing, Midwifery and Quality Directorate as Named Nurse for Safeguarding Children (Band 8a).

This is a Trust-wide leadership role with responsibility for providing strategic and operational oversight of safeguarding children and child protection practice across acute and community services. Working closely with the Named Doctor, Named Midwife and safeguarding colleagues, the post holder will ensure the Trust meets its statutory responsibilities and delivers safe, effective and child-centred safeguarding practice.

The role involves providing expert advice to staff at all levels, leading safeguarding supervision, contributing to policy development, and representing the Trust within multi-agency safeguarding partnerships. The post holder will play a key role in quality assurance, training, audit and service development, supporting organisational assurance and continuous improvement.

This post is available due to the planned retirement of the current post holder. A structured handover will be provided to support continuity and enable the successful candidate to establish strong working relationships across the Trust and with partner agencies.

We are looking for a senior registered nurse with significant safeguarding experience, strong leadership skills and the ability to work confidently across professional and organisational boundaries.

Main duties of the job

• Provide Trust-wide strategic and operational leadership for safeguarding children and child protection across acute and community services.
• Act as the Trust’s Named Nurse for Safeguarding Children, ensuring statutory duties are met in line with legislation, national guidance and local safeguarding partnership arrangements.
• Work closely with the Named Doctor, Named Midwife, Looked After Children team and safeguarding colleagues to deliver a coordinated approach.
• Provide expert advice, leadership and professional support to staff at all levels, including leading safeguarding supervision.
• Lead the development, implementation and review of safeguarding policies, procedures and pathways.
• Plan, deliver and evaluate safeguarding children training, including contribution to multi-agency education where appropriate.
• Lead safeguarding quality assurance activity, including audit, learning from incidents and assurance reporting.
• Represent the Trust at multi-agency safeguarding meetings and partnerships, working collaboratively with external agencies.
• Line manage members of the safeguarding children team, including appraisal, supervision and workforce planning.
• Contribute to service development and improvement, using evidence, audit findings and service user feedback.
• Provide professional advice and assurance on safeguarding children matters to senior leaders as required.

Working for our organisation

Based in the North East of England we provide a range of hospital and community health services from our leading facilities, including the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Blaydon urgent care centre and Bensham Hospital, all within Gateshead.

Established in 2005, we were one of the first foundation trusts in the country and since then have consistently achieved the highest levels of care for patients.

We now employ around 4,800 staff and currently provide 444 hospital beds across the Gateshead region.

Our values should be the ‘golden thread’ which runs through everything we do – they are the core of who we are. Our five values can easily be remembered by the simple acronym ICORE; Innovation, Care, Openness, Respect, Engagement.

We have a number of staff networks including the Global Ethnic Majority (GEM) network, D-Ability network, LGBTQ+ Network and the Women’s Network, to challenge us and help us to constantly improve. Our Armed Forces network is one of our emerging networks.

The health and wellbeing of our staff is one of our highest priorities, and we offer a range of support and initiatives as part of our ‘Balance’ programme balancegateshead.com to cater for our diverse workforce, so that your individual needs can be supported, allowing you a happy and healthy working experience with us.