Safeguarding Children Practitioner

Job summary

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is committed to delivering high-quality, safe, and compassionate healthcare services. Safeguarding is central to the Trust's values and practice, and we actively promote a culture where safeguarding is everyone's responsibility. We are committed to embedding a whole-family approach, recognising that needs, risks and strengths of children, young people and adults are interconnected within family and community contexts

The Trust provides the health safeguarding function within the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) across all four Local Authority in the Trust footprint and exciting opportunities have arisen to join our team, to work within these fast-paced, dynamic multi-agency environments, playing a critical role in protecting and improving outcomes for families, ensuring health information is effectively represented in multi-agency decision-making. We are recruiting to two Safeguarding MASH posts, which will be based within the Isle of Wight and Southampton MASH teams. The post holders will primarily work within these locations; however, flexibility is required to support and contribute across all MASH areas within the Trust footprint, including cross-cover arrangements, to ensure consistency, resilience, and effective service delivery.

There is an expectation post holders will work flexibly to provide cross-cover across MASH sites to support service resilience, consistency, and equitable delivery of safeguarding provision.

Main duties of the job

The Safeguarding Children Practitioner will work within MASH as part of the Trust's safeguarding support team, contributing to the delivery of effective, timely, and proportionate safeguarding response; fundamental to ensuring high-quality health information and professional expertise to inform MASH decision making.

Working closely with the MASH health lead, Named Nurse, Specialist Safeguarding Nurses, the post holder will provide specialist advice, guidance and support to Trust staff, MASH partners, and wider colleagues. The role focus is to ensure safeguarding concerns relating to children, young people, unborn babies and vulnerable adults are identified promptly and responded to appropriately.

The post holder will be responsible for gathering, analysing and interpreting complex health information from a range of health sources. They will identify risk factors, protective factors, and safeguarding needs, contributing to integrated risk assessment and decision-making processes.

This role requires strong analytical ability, sound professional judgement, and excellent communication skills. The post holder will be expected to contribute meaningfully to multi-agency discussions, including providing professional challenge where appropriate, to ensure that safeguarding decisions are robust, evidence-based, and focused on achieving the best possible outcomes

The health function within MASH, is primarily within IOW & Southampton, with flexibility to support all MASH areas across the Trust footprint

About us

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust provides joined-up mental and physical healthcare for around two million people across our communities. With over 13,000 staff working in the community and local hospitals, we deliver care at every stage of life, helping people live their best and healthiest lives.

Our mental health services include community-based support and early intervention in psychosis (EIP) for both adults and young people, alongside a network of specialist inpatient wards covering forensic, learning disability, eating disorder and older person's care.

We deliver extensive physical health services too, from urgent community response teams helping frail and older patients remain safely at home, to hospitals at home teams providing acute-level care in familiar surroundings. Our neurological services offer rehabilitation and treatment for conditions including Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's Disease, Motor Neurone Disease, Head Injury, Cerebral Palsy and Stroke. Across Hampshire, our community hospitals provide inpatient rehabilitation as a step down from acute care, and our dedicated teams also staff Treetops Sexual Assault Referral Centre in Portsmouth, offering expert, compassionate support.

Everything we do is underpinned by our CARE values of compassion, accountability, respect and excellence

Details

• Date posted: 12 June 2026
• Pay scheme: Agenda for change
• Band: Band 6
• Salary: £39,959 to £48,117 a year
• Contract: Permanent
• Working pattern: Part-time
• Reference number: 348-COR-11506
• Job locations: Southampton City Council, Civic Centre, Southampton, Hampshire, SO14 7LY, United Kingdom, St. Mary's Hospital (IOW), Parkhurst Road, Newport, Isle of Wight, PO30 5TG, United Kingdom

Job responsibilities

Further information about the Trust and this role can be found on the Job Description and Person Specification document attached. It is important to us that we ensure our recruitment processes are accessible and inclusive to everyone - if as a potential candidate you are concerned a person specification may prevent or restrict your application for employment as a result of unintentional barriers on the grounds of your sex, race, age, sexual orientation, religion/belief or disability please initially contact the Trust's Recruitment team - detailed in the advert. The Trust will seek to resolve this issue wherever possible.

We are happy to talk Flexible Working - all requests for flexible working options can be discussed as part of the interview process.