Specialist Safeguarding Leads
The role of the Specialist Safeguarding Leads is to provide support and consultation to all practitioners within childrens services where there are complex safeguarding issues.
This includes: Child Sexual Exploitation, Child Sexual Abuse, Criminal Exploitation (incl County Lines and Serious Youth Violence), Harmful Sexual Behaviour, Children at Risk of Radicalisation and Harmful Cultural Practices.
Their duties include:
- chairing complex strategy meetings - for which there is an allocation of four business support minute takers a week
- providing advice on procedure/policy clarification
- acting as a mediator with external services (e.g. Police) and where necessary, escalating concerns to senior managers
- developing and delivering training as it relates to complex safeguarding practice (the team can deliver training to individual teams on request)
- supporting processes around children who go missing and are being exploited, this includes:
- chairing weekly missing children tracker meetings
- supporting case coordination
- attending monthly MACE Panel and PREVENT meetings
- developing policy and practice guidance for complex safeguarding
- supporting child death review processes
Contextual Safeguarding Lead
The Contextual Safeguarding Lead is progressing the 3 year Contextual Safeguarding Scale Up project. This involves working closely with researchers from the University of Bedfordshire who are overseeing the Project, as well as other local authorites where contextual safeguarding is being embedded.
The role includes working with community organisations to develop a contextual safeguarding approach in local neighbourhoods. As well as work with schools related to contextual school assessments and using the approach to unpick harmful behaviour or cultures within groups of children at school. In addition, the CSL is developing tools for practitioners within social care to complete direct work, assess and analyse the risk of extra-familial harm to children in Sutton.