Description
Join Harrow Children's Services as a Lead Child Protection Practitioner, a specialist role for a qualified and registered social worker who can provide expert leadership across Section 47 child protection enquiries, strategy discussions, child protection conferences, and multi-agency safeguarding activity.
The London Borough of Harrow is embarking on an exciting period of change as we deliver a series of ambitious Children's Reforms Programmes – including Families First, Best Start Family Hubs, Best Start in Life, and SEND Reforms. We strive to help every child thrive and through the reforms, we are reshaping our future support for children, young people, and families across the borough.
As part of the Families First Programme, we are building a practice system where relationships are key, where we work alongside children and families encouraging family-led decision-making and offering multi-disciplinary help when it's needed. You will work within a co-located Multi-Agency Child Protection Team, exercising the local authority's statutory child protection duties in line with the Children Act 1989, the Children Act 2004, Working Together to Safeguard Children, the London Child Protection Procedures, and Harrow's local safeguarding arrangements.
Key responsibilities will include:
- Leading and coordinating Section 47 child protection enquiries across Children's Services.
- Chairing strategy meetings, child protection conferences, and other complex multi-agency safeguarding discussions.
- Providing expert consultation, guidance, and professional challenge to social workers, managers, and partner agencies.
- Supporting timely, evidence-informed, and defensible decision-making where children may be suffering, or are likely to suffer, significant harm.
- Contributing to protection and safety planning that is clear, purposeful, and focused on improving outcomes for children and young people.
You will be expected to demonstrate strong capability in identifying and responding to actual or likely significant harm; engaging children and families during Section 47 enquiries; formulating risk and likelihood of significant harm; and planning and intervening to prevent or stop harm.
The role is directly aligned to the Lead Child Protection Practitioner Standards, which set out the knowledge and skills required to effectively lead child protection processes.
About You We are looking for a confident and experienced practitioner who can bring professional authority, sound judgement, and a strong commitment to child-centred safeguarding.
You will have significant operational experience in statutory child protection and a strong understanding of intra-familial and extra-familial harm, including adolescent exploitation and risk outside the home.
You will be able to demonstrate:
- A recognised social work qualification and current Social Work England registration.
- Significant recent experience in front-line statutory child protection practice.
- Detailed knowledge of child protection legislation, statutory guidance, the London Child Protection Procedures, and relevant multi-agency safeguarding processes.
- Experience of chairing or leading complex child protection meetings, including strategy discussions, child protection conferences, or risk outside the home meetings.
- Strong risk analysis, professional curiosity, and the ability to hold complexity, uncertainty, and multiple hypotheses.
- The ability to work collaboratively with families and partners while providing clear professional challenge when needed.
- Be committed to inclusive and culturally competent practice, ensuring anti-discriminatory engagement with children and families.