Safeguarding and Reviewing Officer - REQ005508

INTERNAL ONLY VACANCY. This post is open to existing Leeds City Council employees only. Applications will not be considered from external candidates.

Job title: Safeguarding and Reviewing Officer (Child Protection Conference Chair)

Salary: PO5 (scale point starting at 38 - 41) £49,282 - £52,413

Hours: 37 hours per week

Contract: Temporary – 18 months

Location: Belle Isle Centre

This is an exciting opportunity to join the Child Protection Team in the Integrated Safeguarding Unit. You would be joining a team of experienced Chairs. There are continuous developments and improvements, including continuing to look at creative ways of increasing children and family participation in the conference process and the Risk Outside of The Home pathways. We are extending our quality assurance practice to better support area social work teams and other multi-agency partners. We continue to use and develop the strengthening families’ framework for the conference process.

You should have a ‘can do’ attitude and be able to work in a restorative way under pressure. You will be able to make sound judgements in relation to operational work and management of risk whilst also contributing to the development of both internal and external quality assurance processes.

You must be a qualified social worker with at least 3 years post qualifying experience, with a sound understanding of safeguarding. You should be fully committed to multi-agency partnership work in safeguarding children and understand the importance of maximising the involvement of children and young people and their families.

About you

As a Child Protection Conference Chair you will bring to the role:

Ability to effectively chair multi-disciplinary meetings, ensuring they are focused on the child and produce clear recommendations and plans
Ability to pass information effectively, accurately and concisely between service users, carers, colleagues and other agencies.
Ability to identify shortcomings in social care and other agencies’ policies or practice that impact negatively on children (individually or collectively) and to challenge these restoratively and clearly to relevant front line staff and their managers
Ability to offer clear and positive feedback to workers from all agencies to support and promote good practice

About the role

As a Child Protection Conference Chair you will co-ordinate and chair Initial and Review Child Protection Conferences and ROTH conferences. Facilitate parental and child participation in conferences and contribute to evaluation, monitoring and improvement of standards and practice.

As our next Child Protection Conference Chair you’ll have a role in shaping and ensuring safeguarding practice for children. You will have strong communication skills, confidence in chairing meetings, and be confident in defusing difficult situations and managing conflicting opinions. You will enjoy working independently while bringing the best out of others, including supporting children and their families to fully participate in their meetings and plans.

In Leeds, we use the Strengthening Families Framework (SFF), which focuses on the family’s strengths as well as the risks to the child(ren). As the chair you will facilitate the conference process using a restorative, outcome-focused, family-facing approach. You will promote restorative and anti-discriminatory practice and give proper consideration to issues of race, culture, language, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and disability; the chair is responsible for ensuring this.

Child Protection Conference Chairs work as part of a team of committed and experienced Conference Chairs within a challenging landscape for children at risk of significant harm.

For more information or to arrange a discussion about the role, please contact either Johny Blanc, 0113 3784130 Johny.blanc.leeds.gov.uk or Fiona Adams, 0113 3785382 Fiona.adams@leeds.gov.uk

Please send your Expression of Interest Form through to Fiona.adams@leeds.gov.uk by Friday 3^rd April 2026

The closing date for this job is Friday 3^rd April. Interviews will be held week commencing 6^th April 2026.

A Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check against the Children’s or Adults’ barred list as applicable will be carried out on preferred candidates. Read our recruitment of ex-offenders policy.

We welcome applications from everyone and actively seek a diverse range of applicants from all backgrounds and cultures. We particularly encourage applications from, but not limited to, women, carers, veterans as well as LGBT+, ethnically diverse, disabled and care experienced people.

This role is based in the UK. Home Office guidance states that candidates must evidence their right to work in the UK prior to commencing employment, either as a UK or Irish citizen, under the EU Settlement scheme or having secured any other relevant work visa.

If you do not have the right to work in the UK, you must consider your own eligibility for sponsorship for a particular role through the Skilled Worker visaroute before applying. To be eligible for sponsorship you'll usually need to be paid the standard salary rate of at least £41,700 per year or meet one of the other eligibility criteria. Ensure you are eligible before applying.

Job Description

Job purpose To co-ordinate and chair Initial and Review Child Protection Conferences. To facilitate parental and child participation in Initial and Review Conferences. To contribute to evaluation, monitoring and improvement of standards and practice.

Responsibilities:

Chairing:

To chair Initial and Review Child Protection Conferences on behalf of the safeguarding children’s board, and liaise appropriately with operational staff.
To ensure that the child’s wishes and feelings are represented in conferences even if they are not attending
To facilitate parental and, where appropriate extended family attendance at conferences

Quality Assurance and Performance Monitoring

To participate in a monitoring system that establishes if attendance is appropriate and if child protection plans are being implemented.
To collate information arising from reviews and conferences relating to policy, practice, resources and inter-agency participation as requested by the co-ordinator.
To contribute to monitoring reports submitted to senior management.

Policy and practice

To remain aware of developments in relation to legislation, guidance and regulations and departmental procedures.
To contribute to developing consistency and high standards in the review and conference processes.
To contribute to practice and performance improvement activities in respect of social work and other agencies’ services to children
To contribute to departmental and inter-agency training on subjects relevant to the post.
To represent the section on group tasks or projects relevant to the role and/or service development

Additionally

To participate in training and development activities as necessary to ensure up to date knowledge and skills.
To be skilled in implementing the departmental IT system to facilitate effective recording
To undertake other duties appropriate to the post as required by the Team Manager Safeguarding and Review.
Comply with the requirements of all Leeds City Council and Departmental policies, procedures and staff instructions, including responsibilities under the Health and Safety Policy and Procedures.
To actively promote and support Leeds City Council's and Departmental Policies on Equal Opportunities and to work in an anti-oppressive manner.

Relationships

The post holder will be expected to work as a member of a team within the Safeguarding and Reviewing Section and to maintain close working relationships with other colleagues, service users, carers and other agencies.

Qualifications - The post requires that the postholder has the CQSW/DipSW or equivalent qualification

Essential requirements Candidates will only be shortlisted if they can demonstrate that they meet all the following essential requirements.

Ability to pass information effectively, accurately and concisely between service users, carers, colleagues and other agencies.
Ability to effectively chair multi-disciplinary meetings, ensuring they are focused on the child and produce clear recommendations and plans
Ability to identify shortcomings in social care and other agencies’ policies or practice that impact negatively on children (individually or collectively) and to challenge these restoratively and clearly to relevant front line staff and their managers
Ability to offer clear and positive feedback to workers from all agencies to support and promote good practice
Well developed organisational skills
Ability to work with and consult staff at all levels within the organisation.
Ability to involve children and young people and their carers in reviewing plans
IT skills, including use of Teams, word, excel and e-mail and the ability to learn how to navigate and input onto the department’s electronic recording system
CQSW / DipSw, or equivalent
Comprehensive and current knowledge of Legislation, Guidance and Regulations relating to looked after children and child protection
Of the child care reviewing process and child protection procedures
Of information technology systems and their application to social work ( I moved this from desirable to essential )
Minimum of 3 years post qualification experience in a related field working with children and families, this should include relevant experience in one or more of the following areas, child protection work, residential and family placement services, children who are looked after.

Essential Behavioural & other Characteristics

Understand and embrace Leeds City Council Values and Behaviours and codes of conduct
Committed to continuous improvement in all areas and work towards delivering the Best City Ambition of Health & Wellbeing, Inclusive Growth and Zero Carbon
Able to understand and observe Leeds City Council policies and procedures.
Carry out all duties having regard to an employee’s responsibility under Health, Safety and Wellbeing
Willingness to actively participate in appraisal, training and development activities to ensure up, to date knowledge and skills.
Flexible and adaptable to change to assist other services as required commensurate to grade.
Be aware of and support difference and ensure equality for all working in an anti-discriminatory manner, upholding, equality & diversity of Leeds City Council.
Recognise and appropriately challenge any incidents of racism, bullying, harassment, victimisation, and any form of abuse, reporting any concerns to the appropriate person
The Council has adopted a flexibility protocol and the role will be expected to work within these parameters.

Desirable requirements Candidates are not required to meet all the following desirable requirements however these may be used to distinguish between candidates.

Ability to identify specific areas for development in social work teams that you are linked with and to undertake training and development work to address these
Of the policy and procedures relating to children who go missing and for children and young people who are at risk of Child Sexual Exploitation
Of the policy and procedures for children and young people who are at risk of forced marriage, Female Genital Mutilation and those at risk of Radicalisation and extremism
Of how best to support children and families to build resilience for the future to ensure that the safeguarding process has a sustained impact
Of the Family Group Conference process and how this can might be integrated into the child protection processes
Of chairing Child Protection Conferences or planning meetings
Of managing complex cases and moving situations of conflict to a positive solution
Of working with other agencies to improve outcomes for children
Knowledge of the problems of disadvantaged groups.

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