Description
A fantastic opportunity has opened for a Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) in Hackney’s Children and Families Service (CFS).
Are you passionate about safeguarding children and making a difference?
Are you an experienced Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) looking for an exciting opportunity to use your expertise to influence and strengthen safeguarding practice across a diverse range of organisations?
Do you have the confidence to provide effective professional challenge, manage complex allegations and bring together partner agencies to ensure that concerns about adults who work with children are responded to appropriately?
About the role
We are looking for an experienced and committed LADO to join our Quality Assurance and Improvement service. This is an exciting opportunity to play a key role in ensuring that children are safeguarded, while supporting organisations and professionals to develop strong, effective safeguarding practice.
If you are professionally curious, confident in your judgement and passionate about achieving the best outcomes for children, we would love to hear from you.
Key Responsibilities:
- Lead and coordinate the management of allegations against adults working with children, ensuring prompt and proportionate responses aligned with statutory guidance.
- Provide independent oversight, advice, and professional challenge to partner agencies, while facilitating strategy discussions to manage safeguarding risks effectively.
- Acting as a key advisor, keep the welfare and voice of children central to decision-making, identify learning themes for continuous service improvement, and build strong collaborative relationships across the partnership.
About You
Hackney is looking for enthusiastic, passionate, and highly skilled people who are committed to developing their practice and dedicated to improving outcomes for children and families in Hackney. At the heart of your work is a desire to co-create meaningful change for our children, young people and families.
We are seeking applicants who align with our Systemic, Trauma-Informed and Anti Racist (STAR) model of practice and who share our commitment to dismantling systemic racism and injustice. The ideal candidate:
- Applicants should hold a degree-level education, including a certified and current qualification in social work, backed by evidence of ongoing professional development as an experienced safeguarding professional.
- You will bring strong knowledge of safeguarding children, statutory guidance, and managing allegations against people who work with children, paired with excellent professional judgement to assess complex information, identify risk, and make defensible decisions.
- Confident in providing challenge and holding organisations to account while maintaining positive working relationships, you offer exceptional multi-agency collaboration, negotiation, and communication skills across all levels.
- Furthermore, you are a reflective, professionally curious practitioner who manages competing priorities effectively, keeps children at the heart of practice, and embodies Hackney’s STAR practice model, PROUD values, and commitment to anti-racist practice and dismantling systemic discrimination.
Benefits
Hackney Council works to eradicate discrimination on the basis of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. We also recognise that people can be disadvantaged by their social and economic circumstances, so we will also work to eliminate discrimination and disadvantage caused by social class.
This post is subject to an enhanced DBS check.