About the Organisation

Edmund Rice Community Services Ltd (ERCS) is a national not-for-profit organisation that exists to build communities where people thrive and belong. We do this by addressing social isolation, unjust structures, marginalisation, access to appropriate education and learning opportunities. We support a number of focused communities, that have developed specific responses to solve or improve full engagement in society for people.

About the Opportunity

Through collaboration with others across ERCS, the Safeguarding Manager will help to drive organisational practices relating to the following areas:

• Prevention (reporting to leadership, risk assessments etc.),
• Developmental (training, raising awareness etc.),
• Corrective (investigations, incident management, personnel support etc.),
• Culture (staff, volunteer, community, organisational etc.); and,
• Compliance (National Child Safe Principles, State Legislation etc.).

Duties include but are not limited to:

Promoting a Safeguarding Culture

• Intentionally creating spaces for engagement with personnel. Being present and responsive to how they are showing up and their varying needs for safeguarding support or advice.
• Commit to fostering and intentionally driving a safe culture for all.
• Maintaining a no-tolerance approach to any abuse and commit to act on all safeguarding related concerns in a fair, timely and professional manner.
• Ensure all relevant legislative and regulatory requirements are communicated to the staff, management team and Board as required.
• Frequent informal education communicated to personnel about relevant safeguarding related topics or areas of interest.
• Assist ERCS personnel in developing an understanding of children’s development needs, needs of adults-at-risk and culturally safe practices.
• Participate in ongoing safeguarding professional development, training and supervision.

Mission & Identity

• Demonstrate and encourage a connection to the ERCS Values, Vision & Mission and use this as a core basis for all work practices.
• Promote an understanding of the story, vision, and values of Blessed Edmund Rice.
• Through collaboration with leadership, foster and develop an organisational culture internally.
• Within ERCS programs, lead and help to enable a healthy organisational culture which respects human dignity and provides equality of opportunity, reflecting cultural and ethnic diversity.

Operational Responsibilities

• Support in safeguarding incidents assessments and provide case consultations as required.
• Ensure consistency in adherence to safeguarding procedures across ERCS.
• Develop appropriate safeguarding resources for ERCS.
• Develop and deliver annual training to staff, volunteers (Advisory Council members, board members and Committee Members).
• Deliver safeguarding inductions to all new staff and members of governance.
• Manage the use of safeguarding related contractor staff who support activity, e.g., on-call support contractors.
• Engage, schedule and manage safeguarding audit processes.

Reporting

• Compile preliminary reporting data.
• Follow procedures in relation to identifying and reporting all forms of actual or suspected, abuse and harm including children, young people and adults.
• Drive the response and management of high risk or high-profile cases.
• Provide timely and accurate report summaries to management and governance as required.
• Support in developing online reporting process and supporting the integration across to CRM

Work, Health, and Safety Compliance

• At all times act within the organisation’s safeguarding policies, code of conduct and procedures
• Support the working with children checks process at ERCS in collaboration with HR
• Support in the review of safeguarding policies and procedures as required
• Proactively ensure all appropriate actions are taken to implement work, health and safety policies, procedures training and legislative requirements
• Actively participate in training and report hazards
• Monitor conduct of all staff and volunteers to ensure any breaches of policy are managed appropriately
• Ensure all policies and procedures are adhered to by self and others and report any breaches of policy to the appropriate authority

About You

This position would suit a safeguarding specialist who is wanting to expand on their current experience to make a difference in the community. You will be a self-starter who thrives on developing and implementing best practice safeguarding principles within an organisation.

You will also have:

• Post Graduate qualification in social work, community development, psychology, counselling or other relevant qualification
• Minimum 5 years experience in a similar role
• National Police Clearance and Working with Children Check/Blue Card
• Experience of Safeguarding practices and policies
• Experience in designing and delivering training programs
• Experience in reporting child or adult-at-risk safety concerns
• Excellent communication skills both written and verbal
• Capacity to work with organisations and people across different contexts and cultures
• Sound awareness of statutory reporting child safe requirements
• Sound awareness of the national child safe principles
• Ability to work within organisation policy
• Demonstrated report writing and presentation skills

This position is part-time (0.6FTE).

This role can sit in any of our offices nationally, including Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney and Hobart, there may be a requirement to travel to other offices locally and interstate occasionally. For more information on this opportunity please contact our Director of Core Support on 0466452776 or email [email protected] using the subject line: Safeguarding Manager - Flexible Location enquiry via Ethical Jobs.

ERCS is a child safe organisation, committed to the protection of children and adults-at-risk. ERCS is committed to a safe culture for all and has zero tolerance of any abuse, discrimination including racism and a zero tolerance of inaction in regard to concerns of this nature.

A position description is attached.