Safeguarding Health Practitioner - Children's Social Care

Job overview

This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced Nurse, Midwife or Health Visitor to be co located within East Sussex County Council Children's Social Care Duty and Assessment Team, providing expert health advice, support and interventions within the safeguarding children arena.

 As part of this role you will use your knowledge and expertise around child development and public health to work with families and social care colleagues informing pre-birth assessments and providing specialist health promotion and advice.  You will have a confident understanding of the types of abuse children may experience and can evidence significant experience of working with children and families within safeguarding and child protection processes.

You will work autonomously contributing towards complex assessments, compiling and analysing health chronologies as required supporting understanding and management of risk such as Fabricated or Induced Illness, and chronic neglect and growth issues.  The successful candidate will participate in multi-agency meetings and decision making, working collaboratively with other agencies providing  specialist health information as appropriate.  You will also receive further training to support undertaking drug screening in liaison with SWIFT to support broader assessment and planning. 

The role includes supporting with the development and delivery of training programmes within the wider safeguarding team and across the Safeguarding Children Partnership.

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• To work with families and use health expertise to inform pre- birth assessments undertaken by Children Services.
• To support vulnerable families and children in need in the community by undertaking short term work with families where appropriate
• To work autonomously, making critical decisions and judgments in relation to the management of safeguarding cases, escalating as required.
• To undertake research/flag and tag for the Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference and participate in the MARAC meetings. 
• To improve communication and understanding between Primary Care, NHS professionals and Children’s Services
• To liaise with Health visiting colleagues and provide specialist knowledge and support if required with the screening and discussion regarding vulnerable families (through joint visits, training, liaison and dissemination of information/advice).
• To act as a resource to social care colleagues with particular knowledge of child development and primary and community health care working practices
• To participate in regular clinical and safeguarding supervision with managers across health and social care.

Working for our organisation

A wide range of staff benefits are available to our staff including staff development, enrolment in the NHS pension scheme, auto-enrolment to our Temporary Workforce Service, access to nurseries at EDGH and Conquest, staff restaurants and on-site staff accommodation.

In addition to an internal Occupational Health department, all staff also have access to free psychological support through our confidential Employee Assistance Programme which is available to staff 24 hours a day 7 days a week.  Onsite parking is available from only £30 a year. 

There has never been a better time to join East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, submit your application today.