Safeguarding Lead - Maternity Cover (Fixed-Term Contract) in London

Remote, with occasional in-person team off-sites and meetings in our hubs: London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds. The candidate must be a resident and have the right to work in the UK.

Salary: £40,000 - £42,000 per annum

Contract: Fixed-Term Contract – approximately 14 months, starting July 2026

Full Time 40 hours a week (9:00 AM to 6:00 PM). Standard working hours are 9am - 6pm (with 1 hour unpaid lunch break), with the option to flex start and end time.

Closing Date: 10 May 2026 at 9am

We offer flexibility to employees to balance their commitments, including medical appointments, parental or caregiving responsibilities, and personal goals.

ABOUT THE ROLE

The Safeguarding Lead sits within the Learning Function, working closely with colleagues across all delivery teams, including Instructors, Learner Support, and other Learning Function staff, as well as teams across the wider organisation. The role reports to the Chief Learning Officer and has board-level reporting responsibilities on a quarterly basis.

Safeguarding is the most important thing we do. In this role you will be central to ensuring Generation UK & Ireland meets all its safeguarding responsibilities, while sustaining a strong safeguarding culture across the organisation.

The ideal candidate would be an experienced, resilient and values-driven safeguarding professional ready to step into the role of Safeguarding Lead for Generation UK & Ireland on a maternity cover basis. This is a senior, organisation-wide role that sits at the core of how we operate. As the Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL), you will be the central decision-maker on safeguarding across all programmes, teams and learner interactions.

Providing expert leadership in a fast-paced, predominantly virtual environment. You will manage complex concerns with calm, sound and defensible judgement, and play a key role in embedding a culture of early reporting and continuous safeguarding improvement across the organisation.

ABOUT GENERATION

Generation is a charity with the vision of a meaningful career for every person. Our aim is to support people facing significant and multiple barriers to employment into life-changing careers they otherwise could not access.

We achieve this with a unique methodology of profession-specific skills bootcamp training, focussed on in-demand careers (specifically in the tech, healthcare and green sectors), with extensive, ongoing pastoral support and matchmaking to employer partners.

Generation launched globally in 2015, and has grown quickly to become the world’s largest demand-led employment initiative. We have placed over 100,000 people into roles, working with over 4,000 employer partners to date across 16 countries and 26 professions.

Since launching in the UK in 2019 have now trained more than 3500 people. Our work focuses on supporting those from diverse groups facing barriers to desirable employment. For these learners, we have achieved an industry leading c. 70% job placement rate with learners now placed at over 800 employers.

We have secured transformative corporate funding from Microsoft, the JP Morgan Charitable Foundation, the Macquarie Group Foundation, Barclays, Blackrock, and many more. We are also the leading charity delivering under contracts from the Department for Education’s Skills Bootcamp strand. This has driven our scale to new programmes, regions and beneficiary groups.

By joining Generation UK&I, you will become part of an organisation committed to social impact and determined to play its part in changing the system in this context. The work is fast-paced, exciting, and innovative.

Generation acknowledges the duty of care to safeguard, protect, and promote the welfare of staff and learners and is committed to ensuring safeguarding practice reflects statutory responsibilities, and government guidance and complies with best practice. We carry out employment and right-to-work checks, and request a declaration of any criminal convictions from all staff as part of our recruitment process.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Case management & decision-making
• Act as the central safeguarding decision-maker across the organisation, ensuring timely and proportionate responses across a potentially high-volume caseload
• Manage multiple safeguarding concerns concurrently, including low, medium and high-risk cases, maintaining clear prioritisation and calm, structured oversight
• Make rapid, defensible decisions where information may be incomplete, applying professional judgement and appropriate safeguarding thresholds
• Lead on complex case management, including situations involving mental health, housing instability, financial hardship and safeguarding risk
• Work closely with Deputy DSLs to co-manage complex or high-risk concerns, ensuring shared accountability and reflection
• Engage with external agencies where required, including social care, police and Prevent, ensuring appropriate and timely escalation

Record-keeping & compliance

• Maintain high-quality, accurate safeguarding records that clearly evidence rationale, actions and decision-making
• Handle all sensitive information with the highest levels of confidentiality, ensuring safeguarding data is recorded, stored and shared in line with GDPR and organisational policy
• Maintain expert knowledge of safeguarding legislation and frameworks across all jurisdictions in which Generation operates including England (Care Act 2014), Scotland (Adult Support and Protection Act 2007) and Ireland (HSE Safeguarding Policy) and apply this confidently in practice, with support from the wider DSL team
• Contribute to organisational safeguarding strategy, audits and board-level reporting

Culture & staff development

• Provide real-time guidance to staff across internal platforms and meetings, supporting immediate safeguarding decision-making
• Advocate for a culture of early reporting, ensuring staff feel confident to log concerns without fear of over-escalation
• Identify patterns and trends across safeguarding concerns to inform proactive interventions and organisational learning
• Deliver safeguarding training that reflects real case scenarios, improving staff confidence in handling complex situations
• Challenge safeguarding practice and decision-making where needed, guiding staff towards safe and consistent approaches while maintaining positive working relationships

ABOUT YOU

• Resilience to manage exposure to sensitive and distressing safeguarding situations while maintaining professionalism and personal wellbeing
• Strong professional judgement, able to assess risk, weigh competing factors, and make defensible decisions that prioritise learner safety while considering organisational priorities
• Calm and pragmatic under pressure, comfortable making timely decisions in a fast-paced environment, even with incomplete information
• Empathetic yet boundaried communication style, able to build trust with learners and staff while maintaining clear professional boundaries
• Confident in challenging poor practice and influencing decision-making across the organisation
• Highly organised and detail-oriented, with a disciplined approach to safeguarding documentation
• Adaptable and flexible, able to respond to changing priorities, emerging risks and the evolving needs of the organisation

EXPERIENCE & Qualifications

• Significant experience as a Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) or equivalent senior safeguarding role, minimum 3–5 years
• Formal, current DSL or Advanced Safeguarding qualification from a recognised provider, reflecting strong understanding of safeguarding responsibilities within an educational or training environment
• Working knowledge of the Prevent Duty, including the ability to recognise indicators of radicalisation and respond appropriately
• Strong working knowledge of safeguarding legislation and frameworks in the UK
• Demonstrated experience managing complex and high-risk safeguarding concerns, including maintaining high-quality records that evidence risk, actions and decision-making rationale
• Demonstrable ability to manage multiple safeguarding concerns simultaneously, prioritising effectively across a potentially high-volume caseload
• Experience working with vulnerable adults facing multiple and complex barriers, including mental health, financial hardship, housing instability and caring responsibilities
• Experience making referrals to and engaging with external safeguarding agencies, including Social Care, police and Prevent/Channel
• Experience delivering safeguarding training or supporting staff development, fostering a culture of early reporting and confidence across teams
• Comfortable using digital tools and platforms for communication, case management and record-keeping

Benefits

• Purpose and social impact in the heart of your work
• Opportunity to make your mark – you'll have a lot of autonomy to bring the Generation blueprint to life in a way that makes sense for your region
• Opportunity to get involved with a range of activities and varied projects – we're a small team, so there are lots of opportunities to get involved in projects across the whole organisation
• We offer flexible and remote working to accommodate everyone's preferred working pattern/preferences and unique needs
• WFH set up offer of support of £300 to help you make your working-from-home setup comfortable and efficient
• Professional development is a priority for Generation and employees and you can access up to £1,000 towards your learning & development per year. This support is accompanied by up to 5 days of training days/study leave per year to enable your development activities.

A fair chance

Every role at Generation is open to applications from all sections of society. We believe in the potential of everyone; regardless of race, religion or belief, ethnic origin, different physical ability, family structure, socio-economics, age, nationality or citizenship, marital, domestic or civil partnership status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other aspect that makes you, well, you.

We believe that the more diverse we are the better we become. More than just encouraging your application, we're committed to conscious inclusion that cultivates an ethos of belonging, connection and shared purpose. We go further together. It’s this philosophy that drives us towards our mission. We open our doors to those who share this mindset.

We are particularly interested in hearing from candidates from marginalised groups. We will assess applications on a rolling basis and close this posting as soon as we have found the right candidate. We look forward to hearing from you.