HEAD OF SAFEGUARDING
Application deadline: 9am, 7th June.
Job Role: To provide strategic leadership and direction on all Choose Love’s safeguarding activity.
In this recently created role, Choose Love is looking for an experienced Head of Safeguarding to lead, implement and oversee our UK and international safeguarding strategy. You will ensure that our safeguarding policies and their implementation are comprehensive, robust and effective, and serve to keep all those with whom Choose Love has contact informed, empowered and safe.
Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer (COO), you will work across both our UK and International contexts, building on our existing safeguarding architecture and approaches and leading on our strategy to keep people safe.
This exciting opportunity has significant influence. The post holder will be a member of the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) and has accountability at board level. You will manage Choose Love’s team of safeguarding specialists and lead on work with our UK and international operating partners to ensure that safeguarding principles – as expressed in its policies – are integrated into organisational culture, function effectively and are supported by good governance, staff supervision and management.
Choose Love
Choose Love started in August 2015 as a hashtag that called for donations for refugees in Calais. Within a week, it had raised 56,000 and was soon receiving 7,000 items every day. Within five years Choose Love had developed a corporate funding base and was supporting over 120 projects across Europe, the Middle East and on the US-Mexico border. Our work now reaches over one million people – all powered by the hard work, dedication and love of over 35,000 volunteers. This growth has been accompanied by institutional change and organisational growth and development. In 2021, following a period of reviews and consultation, it introduced a suite of safeguarding policies.
As Head of Safeguarding, you will create and foster a safeguarding culture that embeds learning, facilitates safe reporting, prevents harm and ensures that we and our grantees do all we can to meet our obligations to be accountable to all those with whom we have contact. You will ensure the effectiveness of procedures and processes for responding to all safeguarding concerns received by Choose Love. In addition, you will:
- Ensure that standards of safeguarding are maintained across all directly delivered programmes and activities.
- Develop and implement a programme of support and assurance for partners, to ensure that suitable safeguarding arrangements are in place across all Choose Love’s programmes and activities and those that are delivered by others in our name, and those who receive grant funding from Choose Love
- Provide support to the safer recruitment process to ensure that all those appointed to act on Choose Love’s behalf are suitable to work with children and vulnerable adults.
- Deploy globally to support partners in the investigation of safeguarding breaches or act as a tactical advisor to those conducting such investigations. You will do this in liaison with Prism the Gift Fund, which is a a registered charity responsible for the governance of Choose Love.
You will have a relevant qualification in a safeguarding related field and/or a minimum of two years professional training/experience in preventing, detecting, and responding to sexual abuse and exploitation. You will also have sound knowledge and experience of survivor centred approaches in the management of safeguarding concerns reported to CL and/or its partners in the field. You should also have substantial experience of managing and supervising staff engaging in safeguarding casework, preferably with a focus on child and / or vulnerable adult safeguarding or working in vulnerable communities. In addition, you will have:
- Extensive experience of safeguarding case work, liaison with statutory partners and the management of organizational responses.
- Demonstrable knowledge and experience of safeguarding in varied settings, preferably with experience of working in/adapting to differing legal jurisdictions.
- Proven experience of investigating allegations of abuse against children and vulnerable adults or other areas of sexual misconduct.
- Proven record of accomplishment of strategy development and implementation.
- Excellent oral and written communication skills, including experience of training or public speaking.
At Choose Love, we are committed to the safeguarding and protection of all those with whom we have contact, especially refugee children and vulnerable adults. We will do everything possible to ensure that only those who are suitable to work with children, vulnerable adults and displaced communities and are recruited to work for us. This post is subject to a range of vetting checks including a criminal records disclosure.
Suitability for the role
- With extensive knowledge of safeguarding children and/ or adults at risk of abuse and Protection against sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA) in the UK and internationally, you will have demonstrable experience of developing and implementing measures to keep people safe from abuse and harm (safeguarding) and misconduct and bullying in a complex organisation.
- Your safeguarding decision-making processes are informed, rigorous and timely. You exercise effective delegation where this is appropriate based on situational risk-assessments You put in place safeguarding management systems and monitor them.
- You are an inspirational leader with excellent judgement, diplomacy and decision-making skills, with proven ability to analyse complex issues, draw conclusions and make clear recommendations. You have experience of directly leading and managing a team of safeguarding focal points; focused on developing, supporting and motivating people to work at their very best.
- You will be experienced in overseeing responses to serious and often traumatic incidents; ensuring that the right people are involved, good decisions are made, and appropriate actions taken with learning shared and incorporated in policy reviews.
- You will be confident in your ability to develop corporate strategies, delivering on associated, planned objectives having previously operated at a senior level in a large and complex organisation that works in a political and contested public space. You use insight and evidence to report to and brief at Board and Executive level.
- You are committed to the values of Choose Love and to upholding the organisation’s fundamental principles and act with integrity.
Benefits
Salary: £50,000 – £60,000
- Working location flexibility
- 30 days holiday (inclusive of bank holidays) – pro rata for part time working
- Up to 8% contributory pension (employer plus employee)
- Flexible working policy
- Opportunities for personal development.
Equal opportunities
We work in a spirit of solidarity with our partners, communities, and beneficiaries without compromising the need for safety and protection. We seek to protect the rights and uphold the dignity and humanity of all those whom we reach. We recognise and respect individuals’ capacity: we see them as actors in their own development, and we encourage their engaged participation in our work.
Choose Love is an equal opportunity and merit employer, offering employment to suitable individuals who exhibit and are willing to ascribe to our mission and values. We are committed to cultivating a fair and healthy environment, where everyone can be themselves and thrive. That’s regardless of your gender, age, ethnicity, disability, religion, sexual orientation, and cultural identity.
Please send your CV and Cover Letter to jobs@choose.love
