Senior Lead Child Protection Practitioner

Job description

Contract Terms

Starting salary: PO7 (£61,476 – £64,839)
Work location: 48 Station Road, Wood Green 
Working Hours: Full Time, 36 per week
Contract type: Permanent 
Closing date: Sunday, 8th November 2026
Interviews: 18-20th November 2026

About Haringey

Haringey is a fantastic place to live and work – the world in one borough. A place brimming with creativity, personality, radicalism, and community. It is a place where we stand up for each other. A place that is proudly distinctive. We’ll be celebrating all this and more as the “rebel borough” when we are the 2027 London Borough of Culture.

Our history champions change-makers and everyday rebels; revelling in our differences, battling discrimination, championing equality, and doing things our own way. Haringey’s people are a huge asset, with knowledge, expertise, and passion. Our staff members embody our organisational values: Caring, Creative, Courageous, Collaborative and Community-focused. These values keep us looking forward, ambitious for the future, and continuously striving to do our very best for all of our residents.

About the Role

Haringey is building a Multi-Agency Child Protection Team, and we need senior leaders of practice to make it work. As a Senior Lead Child Protection Practitioner, you will lead a group of LCPPs, set the standard for high-support, high-challenge practice and make sure that multi-agency decisions are strong, consistent and child-centred.

You will also be a bridge between day-to-day practice and our wider safeguarding priorities, helping us get the new model right as we grow it across the borough.

What you will do:

• Lead, support and challenge the LCPPs in your cluster, including regular reflective supervision.
• Quality assure child protection decisions, strategy discussions, conferences and plans, so that practice is consistent and defensible.
• Lead the most complex and high-risk child protection decision-making, and chair the most difficult conferences.
• Alongside leading the team, carry a share of chairing and decision-making yourself
• Build strong working relationships with police, health and education colleagues in the team, and with MASH, Family Help and specialist teams, including adolescent, disabled children and pre- and post-birth services.
• Agree with colleagues how conferences and cases move across to the MACPT as each cluster starts.
• Use data, audit and feedback from children and families to drive improvement, and help us measure the impact of the team.
• Help recruit, induct and develop new LCPPs, and keep practice guidance up to date as we learn.
• Represent the MACPT with senior leaders and partners, and escalate risks and gaps promptly.

About the Team

The MACPT brings social work, police, health and education expertise together in one team, based at 48 Station Road. The team leads strategy discussions and section 47 enquiries, chairs child protection conferences and oversees child protection plans. MASH remains the front door for referrals. We are introducing the team in phases, one cluster at a time, and learning from each phase as we go. Each cluster is led by a Senior LCPP working with two LCPPs.

About You

You will be a senior child protection practitioner with a track record of leading others, making sound decisions under pressure and building trust across agencies.

Essential:

• A recognised social work qualification and current registration with Social Work England.
• Substantial post-qualifying experience in statutory child protection, including section 47 enquiries and child protection conferences.
• Experience of supervising, leading or managing practitioners, for example as a team manager, assistant team manager, senior practitioner or child protection advisor.
• Experience of chairing or leading complex multi-agency meetings and influencing partners’ decisions.
• Experience of quality assurance, audit or practice improvement, and of using evidence to change practice.
• Thorough knowledge of the Children Act 1989, Working Together to Safeguard Children and the London Child Protection Procedures.
• The ability to hold risk with confidence, challenge senior colleagues respectfully and support others to do the same.
• A commitment to working in partnership with families and to our Dignity for All approach.
  

Desirable:

• Experience of Signs of Safety, or a real interest in working this way.
• Experience of extra-familial harm and contextual safeguarding.
• Experience of setting up or developing a new service or model.
• Experience of working in a co-located, multi-agency team.

Working for Haringey

At Haringey Council we are committed to creating a workplace culture where all our people feel valued, included, and able to be their best at work, and we recognise the benefits of a diverse workforce so welcome applications from all ethnicities and communities so that we continue to make a difference to our residents and community.

Our benefits package includes a leave entitlement up to 31 days + bank holidays, potential hybrid working opportunities, health and wellbeing support, a generous local government pension scheme and a range of discount schemes across leisure and culture that provide both financial and money-saving discounts.

Please note: we reserve the right to end this advert before the noted deadline if we receive sufficient applications. If you wish to apply for this role please ensure that you do so as soon as possible.

Additionally, we are aware that automated emails may end be diverted through to junk email folders. Please continue to check these through the application process. If you have any questions about the status of you application please contact ResourcingHub@haringey.gov.uk