Designated Doctor for Looked after Children

Job overview

The Designated Doctor for Looked After Children provides senior clinical leadership, strategic advice and medical expertise to the ICB in fulfilling its responsibilities as commissioner of services for looked after children and care leavers. You'll provide expert advice to the ICB, Corporate Parenting Board, commissioners, health providers, children's social care and other partner organisations, ensuring that the health needs of looked after children are appropriately considered within commissioning, service planning and quality assurance. You'll provide expert clinical advice on health assessments, health plans, out-of-area placements, medical confidentiality, consent and information sharing, while supporting health professionals to deliver high-quality services to looked after children and young people. The role provides strategic oversight of quality, performance, audit, training and clinical governance, ensuring that statutory requirements, national guidance and clinical standards are embedded across commissioned services. You'll contribute to the development of clinical pathways, policies, service specifications and models of care, using clinical data, research and audit findings to identify areas for improvement.

Main duties of the job

• Provide expert advice on individual cases and policy matters to statutory and voluntary agencies, including children's social care and the police.
• Work with children's services and health providers to ensure appropriate healthcare arrangements for children placed outside the local area.
• Provide advice on commissioning, service planning, quality standards, performance indicators and the quality of health services for looked after children.
• Monitor the performance and quality of health services for looked after children and young people across the health community.
• Provide expert clinical advice to social care, health organisations, residential children's homes, foster carers, school nurses, clinicians undertaking health assessments and other health professionals.
• Provide advice on training needs and contribute to the delivery of training and education for health professionals working with looked after children.
• Provide case-focused clinical support, advice and supervision to health staff and ensure appropriate supervision arrangements are in place for specialist LAC professionals.
• Work collaboratively with designated LAC professionals, safeguarding leads, health providers, local authorities, education, police, primary care and voluntary sector partners.
• Ensure the voice and lived experience of looked after children and care leavers informs clinical practice, commissioning and service development.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The job description and person specification gives you all the information you need about this role. Please look carefully at the criteria in the person specification and tell us what you have done that shows you meet this.

Still have questions? The recruiting manager would love to hear from you, their contact details can be found in the job advert.

We can get a lot of applications for some roles so to be in with the best chance of being shortlisted please make sure you apply as soon as possible. A vacancy may close early if there is a lot of interest in the job.

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All information you supply on your application should, to the best of your knowledge, be true and accurate.

Applicant requirements

You must have appropriate UK professional registration.

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.