Safeguarding Team Lead

Job description

Location: Flexible/Any office location with travel across Southern Housing regions as required

The Role

At Southern Housing, safeguarding is central to our commitment to supporting residents to live safely and independently. We're looking for an experienced Safeguarding Team Leader to lead our specialist safeguarding service and help embed safeguarding practice across the organisation.

This is an exciting opportunity for a safeguarding professional with leadership experience to shape and influence safeguarding practice within one of the UK's largest housing providers.

You'll lead a team of Safeguarding and Domestic Abuse Officers, oversee complex safeguarding and domestic abuse cases, provide expert advice to colleagues and statutory partners, and drive continuous improvement through quality assurance, learning and compliance activities.

The successful candidate will play a key role in ensuring safeguarding remains everyone's responsibility, supporting colleagues to identify, assess and respond effectively to risk while delivering positive outcomes for residents.

What You'll Be Doing

• Leading, managing and developing a team of Safeguarding Officers.
• Providing oversight and direction on complex and high-risk safeguarding cases.
• Overseeing the organisation's domestic abuse portfolio and supporting best practice responses.
• Delivering expert safeguarding advice, guidance and professional challenge.
• Driving high standards of safeguarding practice through supervision, quality assurance and case audits.
• Building strong relationships with local authorities, police, health partners and specialist agencies.
• Supporting the development and delivery of safeguarding training and awareness initiatives.
• Monitoring service performance, compliance and quality standards to ensure continuous improvement.
• Contributing to organisational learning through reviews, audits and safeguarding assurance activities.
• Promoting a positive safeguarding culture where colleagues feel confident identifying and responding to concerns.

What You'll Need

We're looking for someone who can demonstrate:

Essential Experience

• Significant experience working within a dedicated safeguarding role.
• Experience managing complex safeguarding concerns involving adults and/or children.
• Strong analytical and decision-making abilities.
• Excellent communication and partnership-working skills.
• Previous line management experience, including supervision, coaching and performance management.
• Experience providing safeguarding advice and guidance to operational teams.
• Experience working effectively with multi-agency safeguarding partners.
• Experience undertaking quality assurance, auditing or service improvement activities.

Essential Knowledge

• Sound knowledge of safeguarding legislation, statutory guidance and best practice.
• Strong understanding of safeguarding thresholds, risk assessment and defensible decision-making.
• Knowledge of domestic abuse legislation, risk factors and intervention approaches.
• Understanding of professional curiosity, information sharing and multi-agency working.
• Knowledge of quality assurance, governance and safeguarding compliance requirements.

Why Join Us?

This is a unique opportunity to lead and further develop a specialist safeguarding function that makes a real difference to residents' lives.

You'll join a supportive organisation committed to safeguarding, continuous improvement and putting residents at the heart of everything we do.

Selection Process

Shortlisted candidates will be invited to:

• Deliver a presentation.
• Participate in a competency-based interview.
• Demonstrate their experience of leading safeguarding practice, managing complex cases and developing high-performing teams.

Please note: This is a specialist safeguarding leadership position. Applicants must be able to demonstrate substantial experience working directly within safeguarding services, alongside previous line management responsibility and a strong working knowledge of safeguarding and domestic abuse legislation. Applications from candidates without direct safeguarding experience are unlikely to meet the essential requirements of the role.

Closing Date: 27th September 2026 at 23:59

About Us

At Southern Housing, our residents are at the heart of everything we do. As one of the largest housing providers in the UK with over 77,000 homes across London, the Southeast, the Isle of Wight, and the Midlands, we give over 167,000 people somewhere affordable to call their own! We also understand the difference that safe, secure, and affordable homes can make to people's lives.

A career at Southern Housing will allow you to make a difference every day you come to work. Working in the housing sector with us will bring fresh challenges and give you the opportunity to grow and develop, too.