Safeguarding Lead

How you will make a difference

Our participants are incredible and you’ll make sure they are safe, happy, and healthy. You’ll enable them to explore and contribute to important problems in the long term. And you’ll ensure that parents, participants, and other stakeholders trust Leaf to look after teenagers’ wellbeing.

During the residential itself you will:

• Be a welcoming, friendly, and approachable presence, available at all hours if needed

• Ensure that medical, dietary, accessibility, and other health needs are met

• Monitor attendance at sessions, and check in with participants who aren’t present

• Ensure that safeguarding policies are followed

• Proactively check in with participants on how they're doing; offer to listen or support as appropriate

• Proactively take steps to improve the experience of participants and staff

• Coordinate closely with the Operations Lead to ensure that participants’s needs are met

• Ensure that any incidents are dealt with appropriately, including communicating with external agencies and stakeholders if needed

Before the residential you will:

• Attend the staff onboarding on the 18th August

• Be onboarded into existing Leaf systems and apprised of arrangements (~5 hours)

• Review existing safeguarding and harassment policies to ensure that you are satisfied with them and that they meet necessary requirements, plus coordinate any requirements with relevant stakeholders and staff (~15 hours)

• Conduct a risk assessment for the venue and take any additional safeguarding actions needed (~5 hours)

• If you don’t already have relevant safeguarding training, you will need to identify and undertake some (5-40 hours?). We can discuss additional payment and reimbursement for these if needed.

There is the possibility of taking on some additional paid work after the residential (£15-30 per hour), e.g. for setting up better mental health support systems, or involvement in subsequent programmes.

What we’re looking for

Must-haves:

• Normally resident in the UK, e.g. a UK citizen or living here indefinitely with the right to work here.

• Supportive, caring, and excited to support young people to make a positive impact

• High emotional intelligence (e.g. perceptive about issues people might be having), plus a welcoming, friendly, and approachable demeanour

• Excellent communication skills, especially verbal

• Understanding of effective altruism and longtermism (plus their implications for demandingness, mental health, and burnout)

• Familiar with common issues that affect young people

• Reliable and well-organised

• Independent and agentic

• Problem-solving mindset

Nice-to-haves:

• Experience in mental health, social care, or other fields relevant to safeguarding

• Trainings and certificates in relevant fields and needs

• Experience working with 16-18 year olds

• Experience supporting the planning and delivery of events

Application process

1. Expression of interest form (~30 minutes)

2. Interview call (<60 minutes)

3. If conditionally accepted, you’ll need to get a DBS check and provide a reference.

Applications are now closed, though we’re still interested in receiving expressions of interest in Facilitators and Counsellors, and are actively looking for additional mentors.

Note: if you earn more than £1,000 in a year from self-employed income such as this, you will need to submit a self-assessment to HMRC.