Trust Strategic Lead for Safeguarding

Are you a passionate and experienced safeguarding professional looking to make a significant impact? Outwood Grange Academies Trust, a leading and long-established multi-academy trust across the North of England, is offering an exceptional opportunity for a dynamic leader of safeguarding to champion a culture of safeguarding excellence and ensure the wellbeing of all our pupils. This is an exciting opportunity to ensure safeguarding remains our highest priority through providing expert advice and guidance, and supporting our schools to deliver outstanding pastoral practice.

Our Family of Schools is supported by our School Improvement Team, a collective of highly experienced professionals recognised as experts in their respective fields. These leaders bring a wealth of experience from senior leadership, subject specialisms, SEND, attendance and family and community, each holding a trust-wide responsibility. Under the direction of the Executive Team, this team provides specialist support and additional capacity precisely where it is needed across the Trust.

The post would suit an experienced leader with significant safeguarding experience acquired through an education, local authority, children’s services or social care background.

As Strategic Lead for Safeguarding, you will:

• Set the long-term vision for safeguarding through developing a strategy which is underpinned by statutory guidance and the arrangements of Local Safeguarding Children’s Boards (LSCBs), and which informs relevant Trust policy and practice.
• Support the ongoing professional development of all staff, especially Designated Safeguarding Leads (DSLs), leaders, governors and trustees, in safeguarding and pupil wellbeing through developing and delivering high quality training.
• Promote high standards of safeguarding and pastoral practice through supporting leaders to better understand and respond to local contextual safeguarding priorities, leading to improved cross-phase working.
• Provide specialist child protection guidance and support for complex cases and assessments, liaising with partners and escalating incidents with Local Authorities.
• Facilitate knowledge sharing and best practice through acting as a central point for capturing and disseminating effective practices within the Trust and also looking outwards to identify successful approaches elsewhere.
• Implement and embed systems to monitor and evaluate safeguarding management data across the Trust, analysing and reporting to the Executive Team and OGAT Board on emerging safeguarding and child protection concerns and suggested improvement recommendations.
• Lead safeguarding quality assurance, including annual auditing activity and record reviews to identify improvement priorities.

This is an exciting time to join Outwood Grange Academies Trust. We are refreshing and renewing our strategy with a clear ambition: to ensure every one of our schools stands as a beacon of sustainable excellence, delivering the very best for the children we serve. Your leadership will foster collaboration, ensure high quality and promote continuous improvement across the Family of Schools. It’s about empowering colleagues to deliver outstanding pastoral practice for their students.

This key role offers a unique opportunity for an experienced leader to make a profound and lasting impact as the Trust Strategic Lead for Safeguarding. The position requires flexibility and a willingness to work across any of the 42 schools within the Trust, under the direction of the Chief Executive of the Outwood Institute of Education.

Your dedication and vision will ensure that our schools are places where every child, particularly the most vulnerable, feels valued, supported, and empowered to thrive, every single day. Through placing students first, you will raise standards and transform lives.

Outwood Grange Academies Trust is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment. All appointments are subject to an enhanced DBS check.