Safeguarding Children Specialist Nurse in Brighton

At UHSussex, we’re proud to be at the heart of the NHS. As one of the UK’s largest acute trusts, we’re a leading example of the excellence, ambition and values that have embodied the NHS for over 70 years. Our hard-working, talented and dedicated people work together towards a common goal – to deliver Excellent Care Everywhere for our patients, our people and our communities.

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The Safeguarding Children Specialist Nurse at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust (UHSx), based at the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital, ensures statutory safeguarding duties are met across East Sussex, West Sussex, and Brighton & Hove. The postholder provides expert clinical advice, professional leadership, and operational support, acting as a key resource for staff managing complex safeguarding concerns.

The role involves leading on-site safeguarding activity, supporting the Named Nurse, and offering real-time guidance to clinical teams. Responsibilities include:

• Assessing sensitive information
• Contributing to multi-agency decision-making
• Managing high-risk cases in line with legislation, statutory guidance, and Trust policy

Education and workforce development are central to the role. The Specialist Nurse designs, delivers, and evaluates training, provides safeguarding supervision, supports ward-level champions, and embeds learning from audits into practice. They contribute to audits, quality improvement initiatives, and Trust-wide policy development.

Working collaboratively with internal teams and external partners, the postholder ensures a coordinated, child-centred approach to safeguarding, early identification of risk, and timely interventions. They champion safeguarding culture, advocate for children, and ensure their voice informs clinical and organisational decisions.

The Safeguarding Children Specialist Nurse is responsible for supporting the delivery of safe, effective and responsive safeguarding services across UHSx. The postholder provides expert clinical advice, guidance and support to staff in relation to safeguarding concerns involving children and young people, ensuring that cases are assessed, escalated and managed in line with statutory requirements, national guidance and Trust policy.

They will analyse highly complex and sensitive information, exercise a high level of professional autonomy and judgement, and contribute to decision making in multi-agency contexts. The role includes leading safeguarding activity on site, maintaining strong working relationships with paediatric teams, emergency departments, maternity, mental health liaison and other hospital services, as well as liaising closely with external partners including social care, police, community health teams, schools and local safeguarding partnerships.

The postholder will support the Named Nurse for Safeguarding Children by contributing to the Trust’s safeguarding strategy, governance processes and quality assurance framework. They will participate in and contribute to safeguarding audits, statutory reviews, internal investigations and the development of action plans. They will prepare reports, chronologies and safeguarding analyses as required for internal and external processes.

The role involves delivering safeguarding children training to a wide range of staff groups, providing safeguarding supervision, identifying learning needs and supporting the development of safeguarding champions across UHSx. The postholder will promote high standards of safeguarding practice, ensure compliance with local and national policies, and embed learning from incidents and reviews into everyday clinical practice.

In addition, the Specialist Nurse will support the operational management of safeguarding activity on the Brighton site, assist in maintaining accurate safeguarding data, and help monitor safeguarding incidents, follow-up actions and performance indicators. They will represent the Trust at relevant meetings, including internal safeguarding forums and external multi-agency discussions, and will work collaboratively with partners to ensure timely, coordinated responses to children at risk of harm.

The postholder will maintain a visible presence within clinical areas, act as a role model for best practice in safeguarding and contribute to the continuous improvement of safeguarding services across UHSx.

Both Registered Nurse on the NMC register, relevant degree level study, post graduate level study in child safeguarding or working towards, evidence of ongoing professional development, experience of working with children and families and safeguarding children, leadership experience, Level 3 Safeguarding Training, knowledge of national and local safeguarding guidance and relevant legislation, excellent computer literacy skills and experience of working with databases, teaching and training and presentation skills, ability to prioritise, work flexibly and to tight deadlines, able to work collaboratively across multi disciplines and agencies, experience in managing uncertainty and risk, excellent communication, negotiation, and advisory skills, strong crisis management skills, compassionate and empathetic, proactive when managing caseloads, strong resilience both emotionally and practically, ability to support and develop others, able to work autonomously and take responsibility for own actions, Master’s or working towards Teaching and assessment Qualification, experience of working within an acute health care provider, experience in Safeguarding supervision, Child Death Review experience, Improvement & Change management experience, report writing and policy, guideline development.

Evidence of having undertaken own development to improve understanding of equalities issues, evidence of having championed diversity in previous roles.

Important information for applicants: We value the individuality and authenticity that each candidate brings to the application process. While AI tools are increasingly accessible, we strongly discourage their use in completing your application. Your responses should reflect your own voice, experiences, and motivations—elements that are essential to a fair and accurate evaluation.

Closing Adverts Early: In the event of exceptional interest, we may close adverts earlier than specified. Some of our adverts are capped for a limited number of applications; therefore, the advert will close once the cap has been reached.

Flexible Working: If you would like to explore potential options regarding flexible working please speak with the appropriate recruiting/line manager.

DBS Checks: As part of our commitment to a safe working environment, we undertake a Disclosure and Barring Service check on all new employees where the role is eligible for a criminal record check.

UHSussex reserves the right to close the role early if we receive a high volume of applications.