Assistant Director of Safeguarding in Ashford

The closing date is 22 March 2026. Please note: at this stage, the role is open only to colleagues currently employed within Kent and Medway NHS Trusts, the Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board (ICB) and Medway Community Healthcare. Nursing vacancies are also open to Student Nurses and Newly Qualified Nurses.

The Assistant Director of Safeguarding provides expert professional and clinical oversight and leadership for all aspects of safeguarding adults, children and looked after children, Mental Capacity, and the legal requirements of Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards ensuring full compliance with statutory and regulatory expectations. This involves monitoring and improving business processes, maintaining robust records, analysing performance reports, and enabling effective information flow across the organisation. The role also contributes to shaping a Trust strategy to drive the highest standards and ambition in patient care, ensuring services consistently meet the requirements of regulators such as the Care Quality Commission, NHS England and NHS Improvement. Additionally, it leads and supports the development of the Safeguarding Strategy in partnership with system stakeholders to strengthen safeguarding practice across the wider health and care.

Main duties of the job

• You will provide visible and credible clinical leadership to the Clinical, Care & Quality Directorate and operational services across KCHFT, promoting collaborative working and empowering all staff to deliver outstanding clinical care to patients, clients and service users.
• You will operationally line manage the named safeguarding leads and safeguarding functions at system and place, providing strategic direction for the safeguarding agenda across the system and Trust.
• Working closely with the designated professionals, named leads safeguarding boards and partnerships, and senior leaders across KCHFT and partner organisations and agencies, you will inform and influence safeguarding performance and monitoring.
• Ensuring equity of access to health services to address the identified health needs of safeguarding children, adults at risk of abuse and neglect and LAC.
• You will be responsible for sharing information at Trust, health economy, regional and nation levels.
• You will ensure systems and processes are developed to ensure high standards of governance and are delivered and evidenced, meeting regulators standards.
• You will be required to deliver and present high quality, complex reports and materials at a senior level, including to the Board.

About us: Rated 'outstanding' by the CQC, we have a passion for delivering high standards of patient care and excellent services to improve the health of our communities. To do this we need outstanding people who share our values: compassionate, aspirational, responsive, excellent. We know a commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion leads to better patient care and a happier workforce. We pride ourselves in being diverse and welcome applications from people with varied backgrounds, perspectives and experiences.

As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want you to be able to work in a way that is best for us, for our patients and for you. Talk to us about a flexible working arrangement that won’t involve sacrificing time for personal interests or family commitments. We’ll support you to work flexibly in a way that suits us both.

Job responsibilities

• As a community Trust, many of our roles require individuals to be able to drive to perform their duties. Where driving is a requirement of the role, you will be asked to confirm that you hold a full UK driving licence or a full driving licence issued by an EU country (not exchanged from a non-EU country) to proceed with your application.
• We are committed to supporting candidates with disabilities into employment. If you are unable to drive due to a disability, please contact the Recruitment Team so we can support you further.
• The job description and person specification gives you all the information you need about this role. Please look carefully at the criteria in the person specification and tell us what you have done that shows you meet this in your application.
• If you need an application form in an alternative format please let our recruitment team know.
• All information you supply on your application should, to the best of your knowledge, be true and accurate.
• Still have questions? The recruiting manager would love to hear from you, their contact details can be found in the job advert.
• At KCHFT we strongly encourage colleagues in clinical and non-clinical roles who have direct or social contact with patients to be fully vaccinated.

It is important to us that all our staff are aligned to our Values and in particular the behaviours we expect from KCHFT managers. With this in mind as part of the selection process for this position you will be asked to complete two other activities in addition to the competency-based interview that you will be invited to. This extended selection process is designed to assess your management style and the specific details of the exercises will be given if you are successfully shortlisted.

Person Specification

• A master’s degree level or equivalent, with high level analytical skills and the ability to translate vision into clear direction OR you will be able to demonstrate the equivalent level of experience.
• You will be able to demonstrate highly specialist knowledge of National Policies relevant to health and social care.
• You will have up to date knowledge of local and national child/adult safeguarding procedures.
• You will be able to demonstrate a clear vision of patient care and service delivery models and performance frameworks.
• You will have an understanding of National Service Frameworks, statutory reporting and legal requirements relevant to care setting and its application across health care services.
• You will have a proven ability to develop effective partnerships to achieve practical outcomes across organisational boundaries including statutory organisations, external agencies, community and voluntary organisations.
• A full, valid UK driving licence or a full driving licence issued by an EU country (not exchanged from a non-EU country) and the ability to travel independently are essential for this role.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.