Independent Scrutiny Lead

This new role, hosted by Avon & Somerset Police and reporting to the Avon & Somerset Strategic Safeguarding Partnership, is focussed on how effective the leadership of our safeguarding system is.

Do you relish your independence when ensuring that robust and transparent scrutiny processes are in place?  Are you then able to present your findings in a productive way to improve safeguarding outcomes? Do you have the ability to influence and persuade partners who themselves may be affected by opportunities for organisational learning? Faced with a range of priorities, can you drive focus in order to get to the key issues which will tangibly improve the safeguarding system for our communities? Do you have a good and practised understanding of the statutory guidance on inter-agency working on safeguarding and Sir Alan Wood’s review of local safeguarding children partnerships? Can you assimilate the considerable amounts of information and research on local and national issues in safeguarding, and be able to analyse and communicate it in a way that the Partnership can clearly understand and use it to improve our partnership arrangements?  Can you coordinate and prepare for statutory inspections and reviews across the partnership, and support the implementation of any findings and recommendations?  Are you able to support and coordinate a network of scrutineers across the region, who will support you in your scrutiny activity?

This is initially advertised as a 12-month contract in order to establish the proof of concept.  You will be expected to provide supporting evidence during this period in order to evaluate whether this role is providing the necessary rigour and scrutiny to the partnership structure across Avon & Somerset.

Can you bring to the role an understanding of the perspectives of the people we work with? Do you have life or professional experiences that gives you insight into how we can engage with those who need safeguarding more effectively? Can you bring credibility through your personal or professional experience to the development of safeguarding in such a way that enables you to hear the very different and diverse voices of those the partnership works with? Can you bring those voices not represented on the partnership into our discussions and design of our work?  We believe it is crucial to improve the effectiveness of the safeguarding that our communities need, by enhancing our ability to understand the different lifestyles, beliefs, types of family and issues they face in society through the diversity of our leaders. 

We are keen to meet all suitable applicants and we want to ensure that if you belong to a UK ethnic minority, are LGBT+, or have direct experience of what it is like to come from an economically deprived background you know that your application will be welcomed. We want to meet you if you can bring empathy, an ability to manage people well and could foster strong partnerships with those agencies we work with, the Police and Crime Commissioner and the residents of the Avon & Somerset region.

To be eligible to apply for this role you must have a 5 year ‘checkable history’ in the UK – ideally this means that you would have been resident in the UK for the last 5 years.