Safeguarding Coordinator

Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust, (LGT), is a community-focused provider of local and acute care, delivering high-quality services to over one million people living across the London boroughs of Lewisham, Greenwich, and Bexley. We provide whole-life care and are here to support our communities to live healthier lives as well as taking care of them when they need us the most.

Employing almost 7,500 colleagues, affectionately known as Team LGT, we provide services at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, University Hospital Lewisham, and at over a dozen community settings in Lewisham. We also provide some services at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup.

We have recently launched our new vision and values to mark the LGT10 – the tenth anniversary of our Trust forming in 2013. Our trust vision is to be exceptional. In the quality of our patient care; our support for colleagues; and in the difference we make through our partnerships and in our communities.

To achieve this we value Respect, Compassion, and Inclusion; Being accountable over staying comfortable; Listening over always knowing best; and Succeeding together over achieving alone. You can read more about our visions and values here

Our hospitals and community sites provide a wide range of inpatient and outpatient services, as well as emergency and planned care. The Trust is rated as “good” or “outstanding” in over three-quarters of the services inspected by the Care Quality Commission.

Every year our work includes performing 10,000 procedures in our theatres; bringing seven and a half thousand new lives into the world; carrying out 570,000 visits to patients in their homes or communities and providing emergency care for more than 300,000 patients arriving in our busy Urgent and Emergency Departments.

LGT is a centre for the education and training of medical students enrolled with King’s College London’s GKT School of Medical Education. We are a training centre for nurses, midwives and allied health professionals. We are pioneering new roles that will support the changing needs of our patients and are one of the largest employers of physician associates in the country.

We are committed to working with our partners to deliver the best outcomes for our local communities. This means playing an active role in the South East London Integrated Care System (ICS), and in formal partnerships including the South East London Acute Provider Collaborative, provider partnerships with our local mental health trusts and borough-based boards of the ICS in Bexley, Greenwich and Lewisham.

Job overview

The post hold will work across both acute (University Hospital Lewisham and Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich) and community sites and provide cover as required.

The Safeguarding Coordinator role provides administrative support during the working day to the Safeguarding Children team. It includes the management of information, manpower, records, databases, correspondence, diary management, reports and organising and minute taking for safeguarding children related meetings.

The Safeguarding Coordinator role involves coordinating and arranging child protection medicals and act as a point of contact for social workers to arrange child protection medicals within agreed time frames as set out within department standards.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will also provide data regarding key performance indicators as per department standards, working with the Safeguarding team to develop, manage information and maintaining databases.

The post holder will receive and collate, and disseminate case conference information ensuring that referrals are made onto electronic record keeping systems as set out in department standards.

The post holder will be a key point of contact into the safeguarding team during the working day and will be responsible for responding to enquiries regarding safeguarding children as well as coordinating day to day safeguarding children matters. This will include processing notifications and referrals for children aged 0-18 yrs.

The post holder will exercise a high level of professionalism and confidentiality demonstrating that communication is effective, courteous and professional at all times.

It is essential that the post holder builds and maintains working relationships with all stakeholders including: clinical, non-clinical staff, other services within the Trust and external partner agencies in particular Bexley, Greenwich and Lewisham Local Authority Children’s Social Care Departments, Safeguarding Children Boards and Clinical Commissioning Groups.

Working for our organisation

Our people are our greatest asset. When we feel supported and happy at work, this positivity reaches those very people we are here for, the patients.

Engaged employees perform at their best and our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) initiatives contribute to cultivate a culture of engagement. We have four staff networks, a corporate EDI Team and a suite of programmes and events which aim to insert the 5 aspirations:

1. Improving representation at senior levels of staff with disabilities, from black, Asian, and ethnic minorities background, identify as LGBTQ+ and women, through improved recruitment and leadership development
2. Widening access (anchor institution) and employability
3. Improving the experience of staff with disability
4. Improving the EDI literacy and confidence of trust staff through training and development
5. Making equalities mainstream

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Key Result Areas & Performance:

Process safeguarding referrals for safeguarding team within working day and department standards.

Organise within 24 hours as per department standard, child protection medicals undertaken by Community Paediatricians and prepare information prior to assessment. Prepare information prior to assessment. Ensure performance data maintained as per department standards.

Support the organisation of Community Paediatrician's child protection medicals conjunction with the Named Doctor for Safeguarding on monthly basis.

Receive invitations to case conference from local authority children’s social care and ensure relevant practitioners’ are aware, records are updated and monitoring of attendance and activity to support safeguarding team data collection and reporting as per department standards.

Undertake direct management of safeguarding committee and operational meetings, including the production of agendas, minute taking and coordination of papers and ensuring that key documents are available within defined timescales.

Respond to incoming telephone calls and deal with enquiries, including those of a sensitive nature; channelling and documenting these appropriately and in a timely manner.

Have shared responsibility of the administrative task across Safeguarding Children team on a daily basis including filing, record keeping, taking messages and delivering these promptly, processing incoming and outgoing mail, photocopying, faxing/scanning of documents, etc.

Assist with adhoc tasks across the team as required.

Maintain excellent standards in relation to office procedures, presentation of material and office systems, all paper resources including medical files, directories, reference books and Trust and Service Policies.

Action requests for data in a timely manner following information governance guidelines.

Support on audits as required.

Support with Emergency Department Discharge summaries ensuring they are escalated to the correct professional within one working day and departmental standards.

Support with information sharing and preparation in Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conferences MARAC, Multi Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) within department standards.

Support the Named Professionals in co-ordinating Safeguarding training by liaising with Workforce and Development to agree dates, timings and venues for staff training in the Trust.

Maintain constructive relationships with a broad range of internal and external stakeholders and specifically health professionals from a wide range of services and disciplines.

Identify and collate the relevant health information to add to the multi-agency risk assessment within department standards.

Record health information for agendas as directed by Safeguarding Team and within department standards

Develop and implement data collection systems that will provide accurate and timely data safely and effectively in line with department standards.

Person specification

Qualifications and Training

Essential criteria

• GCSEs or equivalent

Desirable criteria

• NVQ Level 3 in Business Administration

Experience

Essential criteria

• Minimum of 2 years’ administrative experience.

Knowledge and Skills

Essential criteria

• Ability to develop and implement new and existing systems in the department.
• Ability to use Word, Excel, PowerPoint and database software.
• Ability to use a PC for word processing to a good standard
• Ability to use internet/intranet to gather information for a wider range of uses
• Experience of managing competing and varied demands

Desirable criteria

• Understanding of safeguarding In relation to CYP

We reserve the right to close the post before the stated closing date, please apply early. We do not contact applicants with the outcome of the shortlisting. If you have been shortlisted, you will receive an invite to an assessment day or interview.

As a local employer and anchor institution we work closely with our community to recruit locally and we welcome applications from the widest variety of people to ensure our workforce are reflective of the local communities which we serve. We encourage all suitable candidates to apply including if you are Black, Asian or other ethnic minorities, live with a disability (visible or not) or are LGBT+.

We have a number of active staff networks including Disability, LGBT+, Multicultural Inclusion and Women’s staff networks to bring staff together and celebrate diversity across our whole workforce.

Please note that sponsorship under the Skilled Worker route is subject to Trust allocation and UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) approval.