Senior Safeguarding Officer

As YoungMinds’ Senior Safeguarding Officer, you will play a key part in helping to promote the safety and wellbeing of everyone who comes into contact with YoungMinds – whether that’s via our Activist programme, our campaigns, individual and corporate fundraising, our Parents Helpline, social media, training and service design work or any of the charity’s other activities. It’s a role that engages with colleagues across the organisation, at all levels, and will give you the opportunity to contribute to YoungMinds’ ‘culture of care’ approach to safeguarding.

You will build excellent, trusting relationships with teams where safeguarding concerns are most frequently managed, and be available to guide them, and all other staff and volunteers, in their day-to-day practice, as well as when a safeguarding emergency arises. When necessary, you will confidently use your knowledge of safeguarding and child/adult protection thresholds to take appropriate actions, including creating and maintaining high-quality records, signposting, and referring cases to statutory bodies for investigation. You will frequently provide support out-of-hours where YoungMinds activities are happening in the evenings, weekends or overnight.

Key Duties and Responsibilities 

• Provide safeguarding advice, direction and support to staff and volunteers and take over the management of cases if necessary.
• Manage and escalate referrals to other organisations where appropriate.
• Apply YoungMinds’ procedures for information sharing internally and externally, including keeping records of concerns, incidents and referrals.
• Sign off risk assessments created by teams across the organisation for all events involving young people or where other risks are identified.
• Manage the on-call workload of the safeguarding team and Lead Safeguarding Officers, including the planning of out of hours safeguarding support. Please note: this role will require you to be on-call on a frequent basis.
• Support the Senior Safeguarding Manager in delivering organisational safeguarding priorities and contribute to safeguarding audit processes.
• Deliver safeguarding training across the organisation, including induction and refresher training, and support facilitation of bespoke safeguarding training.
• Share experiences and learning with other YoungMinds colleagues.
• Deputise for the Senior Safeguarding Manager and represent the safeguarding team at internal and external meetings and other events where necessary.
• Champion, contribute to and invest in YoungMinds’ ‘culture of care’.
• Other duties that may from time to time be necessary, compatible with the nature and grade of this post.