Safeguarding Administrator (Part time Positions)

Overview

At the London Diocesan Fund (LDF) we seek to do everything we can to support the mission and growth of the Church of England in London.

The Safeguarding team provides advice and other services to parishes, bishops and clergy across the Diocese of London to enable safe and welcoming worshipping communities throughout the Diocese. Providing advice and support to ensure safer recruitment and safer ways of working, we also seek to ensure that we respond well where safeguarding concerns arise.

It is essential that the role holders are comfortable working within a Safeguarding environment  and with the sensitivities and complexities surrounding Safeguarding, and are willing to support the Safeguarding Team to guarantee a diocesan safeguarding service that is accessible to all the people we serve.

There are 2 roles available – one role may be part-time and the other full-time, or the other alternative option is two part-time roles.  The LDF are flexible on whether the roles are fulltime/ part time/ or job-shared.

Introduction

The role holders will provide overall administrative support to a busy operational Safeguarding team in anticipating administrative needs to support the wide-ranging responsibilities of the team. Working within House of Bishop’s Safeguarding Practice Guidance, but also within a statutory context requires working to deadlines to respond well to disclosures of abuse and/or identify and manage risk. The duties involve being part of new initiatives that rely on having an inquisitive and analytical role holder to put systems in place to achieve this.  

This includes:

• providing overall administrative support for the Director, Safeguarding Manager and Safeguarding advisers including phone calls, emails and other communication, undertaking tasks that are reasonably requested when new work arises.
• Providing administrative support with meetings, systems and operations ensuring we are able to deliver our projects and operational plans over the next five years, include with Vision 2030.

The Safeguarding Team supports the development of a safer culture within our parishes and the wider diocese through the provision of professional safeguarding guidance, the delivery of a programme of safeguarding training, the provision of DBS services, risk assessments for offenders returning to the community, and survivor and victim support. We enable safeguarding partnerships within our diocese and with our national team.

Main Responsibilities

Administrative support for meetings

• Provide excellent administrative support for the Diocesan Safeguarding Steering Group and operational DST meetings, providing administrative support to the independent chair and processing attendee’s invoices and expenses.
• Coordinate the preparation of our annual meeting schedule and provide excellent administration to the meeting leads.
• Provide administrative support for the Safeguarding Advisors, including diary management, supporting their initiatives, quality assurance audits and work which contributes to the operational objectives and plans.
• Execute the smooth running and minuting of the meetings for multi-denominational safeguarding forums hosted by the Safeguarding Advisors.
• Work with the safeguarding team to coordinate meeting arrangements for strategy/core groups and production of agendas and coordination of reports in line with House of Bishops Practice Guidance and statutory timescales.
• Minute core groups meetings and produce high quality accurate minutes.
• Track core group/strategy meeting actions and chase outstanding actions and liaise with the necessary parties.

Administrative support for safeguarding activity

• Work with the Safeguarding Manager and Safeguarding Advisors to provide day to day administrative support, working closely to ensure functions run smoothly.
• Provide administrative support for Case Reviews and commissioned investigations.
• Work in partnership with the Safeguarding Advisors to coordinate the timetable for the completion and timely review of safeguarding agreements as required.
• Provide effective administrative support to assist the monitoring and review of case work and the review of Safeguarding policies, maintaining standards as required by the Diocese.
• Work with the Safeguarding Manager to develop systems to collect monthly performance data so that the Diocese can measure, monitor and report on performance over time.
• Prepare statistical information from existing and new systems to provide performance data to assist the completion of national returns and regular reporting management information. 

Training administration

• Monitor and provide administrative support for the e- learning provision Me-learning.
• Provide high quality and pro-active administrative support to ensure the smooth running of the safeguarding training programme, maintaining Eventbrite and the marketing of courses (including the associated coordination with the website administrator.
• Coordinate with trainers to enable their timely preparation (pre and post training event.
• Coordinate the evaluation process for all training programmes to assess the provider/trainer performance and impact on learning.

General administrative support

• Monitor and regularly review the safeguarding pages of the Diocese of London website and Intranet site including the supporting documents and essential forms, ensuring that they are kept up to date.
• Oversee the administration of the provider contract for DBS, liaising with providers as required on day to day issues and with risk management and Safeguarding Advisors.
• Manage the Invoice (and reconciliation) System with DBS providers and parish payments systems so this is actively managed in line with our processes.
• Work alongside Human Resources as required to implement updates and changes to the Disclosure and Barring Scheme.
• All safeguarding records are held confidentially on the database/ system in line with safeguarding GDPR plan. Coordinate highly confidential and sensitive information Subject access requests and complaints.
• Coordinate the administration and reporting from relevant Safeguarding cloud-based products and tools for the benefit of the team operations.
• Support the Safeguarding Manager with the collation of information and evidence for the annual safeguarding self–assessment.
• Process Invoices and annual subscriptions in a timely way and maintain tracking spreadsheet.
• Maintain core contact details of local authorities, LADO’s and statutory agencies covering the diocesan area.  
• Manage safeguarding inboxes and responds to requests for advice, information, and guidance.
• Work closely with colleagues in our Area Offices and PA’s to the Bishops to ensure the confidential exchange of safeguarding information and that the safe receipt of requests are processed in a timely way. Co-ordinate the necessary requests for safeguarding information.

The post holder may be required to undertake any other duties that are commensurate with the role.

The Ideal Candidate

Person Specification

The person specification is a description of the qualifications, skills, experience, knowledge, and other attributes to perform the job duties.

Essentials

• Well organized and used to prioritising tight deadlines.
• Ability to communicate both verbally and in writing, with a diverse range of people at all levels handling people sensitively and thoughtfully.
• Be enthusiastic and committed to working with the Bishop and Archdeacons to serve the parishes of the Diocese of London.
• The ability to draft complex correspondence quickly and to prepare accurate minutes.
• Familiar with using conferencing and video products to support flexible working solutions.
• Initiative and motivation to get the job done and a good team player to work alongside others to achieve it.
• Ability to work independently and comfortable working without direct. supervision and linked closely with the team to support the overall program of work.
• Confident in learning cloud-based systems and experienced in using Microsoft products.
• Educated to A level standard or equivalent.

Desirables

• Professional knowledge of safeguarding regulations either in previous role whether paid or voluntary.
• A good understanding of the structures of the Church of England.
• Able to quickly to learn and work with the legal/technical terms and protocols used by safeguarding advisors in their daily work.

About us

The LDF exists to support the mission of the Church of England in London. The principal activity of the London Diocesan Fund is to operationally and practically serve and support the Parishes and people within the Diocese of London, enabling the vision that every Londoner will encounter the love of God in Jesus Christ.