Workshops for designated nurses safeguarding children
Course overview
Since the Victoria Climbe inquiry The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust has offered workshops for named and designated health care staff. We are now offering CPD workshops for designated child protection and safeguarding nurses.
The work of child protection is stressful and emotionally demanding and the emotionally painful dynamics engendered by child protection work can make decision making very complex and difficult. Numerous inquiries have pointed out the need for staff support for professionals engaged in this work.
These workshops are intended to develop the skills and understanding of the named and designated professionals working in the complex and demanding field of child protection.
The task of the workshops is to offer a reflective space for designated professionals. Often taking time to think and share clinical and system dilemmas with colleagues is seen to be a luxury but all of the reports and Serious Case Reviews demonstrate that thinking is an absolute precondition of effective work in the challenging world of child protection.
1. To provide an opportunity to explore the roles and tasks of the designated professional in their settings
2. To examine how they will take up these roles and tasks within their workplace
3. To examine how their supervisory and management responsibilities for child protection work will be discharged within their setting
4. To discuss case management and the dilemmas faced by designated professionals
The Workshop for Designated Nurses will provide an opportunity to discuss and explore the task and role of the Designated Nurse as laid out in the ‘Safeguarding Children and Young people: roles and competences for health care staff Intercollegiate Document’ of March 2014 - that is at all times and in relation to the roles and responsibilities works as a member of the safeguarding/child protection team across the health community.
- Lead and support all activities necessary to ensure that organisations within the health community meet their responsibilities to safeguard and protect children and young people
- Advise and support all named professionals across the health community
- Be responsible to and accountable within the managerial framework of the employing
The key areas for exploration in the Workshop is to look at how the designated nurse takes up the role in relation to:
- Inter-agency responsibilities
- Leadership and advisory role
- Clinical role
- Co-ordination and communication
- Governance: policies and procedures
- Monitoring serious case reviews/case management reviews/significant case reviews
- Supervision
- Personal development
Learning is based on the participant’s own practice as a designated professional and focuses on four inter-related functions of the designated:
- Ensuring the implementation of Trust tasks and policies in relation to child protection
- Focusing on staff practice in child protection work
- Facilitating staff’s professional practice in relation to child protection work
- Managing inter-agency relationships and demands
Learning is also based on the struggle to mediate effectively and creatively between these four functions.
Participants will have the opportunity to reflect and work on the issues and feelings engendered by the clinical work entailed in child protection work.
- The sharing of best practice
- The support of colleagues in taking up the role
- The provision of a ‘thinking space’ to examine dilemmas in the role and task
- Greater understanding of the under the surface dynamics that are inevitably in play in safeguarding work
These workshops will provide a reflective space in which participants will be able to present their own work and dilemmas as it connects to child protection. The task of the workshops is to work as a problem-solving group for the presenter’s dilemma or issue and from this the participants will be encouraged to test out new ways of working.
Dr David Lawlor, Director, Centre for Social Work Supervision and Consultancy formerly Head of Social Work at the Tavistock & Portman and Named Professional for Child Protection, Organising Tutor of the MA in Child Protection and Professional Partner Research and Consultancy The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations
Dates for this workshop will advertised here in due course. In the meantime, if you would like to express an interest in attending the course and be put onto the waiting list, please contact us at cpdevents@tavi-port.ac.uk