Safeguarding Consultant

About tiney

We’re building a platform that enables people to open and run their own home-based childcare businesses, allowing passionate early years educators to focus more energy on the children, enjoy doing what they love, and spend less time on the complex business admin and compliance that comes with the job.

We launched in early 2020, have raised Series A funding from top European investors. We're at an exciting stage of growth — we have over 800 registered childcare providers in England and we're processing over £15M per annum of childcare payments through our platform. We believe we have a truly sustainable business model with real revenues and a clear path to profitability.

We have global ambitions and believe that the key to our success will be exceptional technical and product execution. Our vision is to make the entire customer experience of choosing and buying childcare, and managing a childcare business, to be as seamless, joyful and safe as modern digital consumers have come to expect.

Childcare is a famously hard sector to crack, but at tiney we believe our unique team, business model and regulatory/market conditions make us the ideal candidates to have an unprecedented impact. Now's an amazing time to join us on this journey.

The role:

As a Regional Safeguarding Coordinator for tiney, you will play a critical role in ensuring the safety and well-being of children under the care of childminders in your region. This role involves conducting unannounced safeguarding visits, carrying out investigations, and providing comprehensive training and support to childminders and the internal tiney team.

How we work:

The overall purpose of our early years consultants:  

• Conducting unannounced safeguarding visits within the designated region to childminders' premises in response to concerns or complaints.
• Carrying out investigations, as directed by the safeguarding panel, when there are allegations, concerns, or complaints about a childminder's practice.
• Developing, implementing, and leading training programs focused on safeguarding and child protection for childminders, consultants, and the internal tiney team.
• Designing and delivering training on risk assessment, policy implementation, and effective collaboration with families.
• Supporting safeguarding scenarios training to trainees and designated safeguarding leads (DSL) to registered childminders.
• Providing practical and scenario-based training to enhance participants' ability to handle safeguarding situations effectively.
• Member of the Safeguarding Panel, making decisions on childminders ongoing suitability, post and pre reg. 
• Offering ongoing safeguarding support and advice to consultants, childminders, and the wider team, ensuring a consistent and effective approach to child protection.
• Supporting the wider team in monitoring and enforcing compliance actions, following up with childminders to ensure the timely completion of required actions.
• Providing coaching and support to childminders, when needed, to meet compliance standards.
• Contributing to the development and refinement of safeguarding and child protection policies and procedures, ensuring alignment with regulatory requirements and best practices.
• Building and maintaining relationships with Local Authority teams involved in child protection.
• Engaging in multi-agency working with bodies such as the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) and Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) or equivalent entities.
• To carry out registration visits/compliance visits and QA visits as needed 
• Flexible and prepared to travel across the country, to ensure the agency is able to carry out all required visits in order to meet their statutory requirements as a CMA. 
• Be prepared to stay away from home as required.
• To build supportive relationships with tiney registered childminders and tiney colleagues. 
• To ensure all childminders comply with relevant legislation and agency requirements 
• To ensure childminders fully understand their obligations to provide the highest quality of childcare 
• To monitor and evaluate how childminders meet the safeguarding and welfare requirements of the EYFS, to safeguard all children within their settings. 
• To monitor and evaluate how childminders meet the learning and development requirements of the EYFS, to provide the highest standards of care and education to all children within their settings. 
• To support with the planning, delivery and evaluation of support visits, registration visits, compliance visits and quality assurance visits. 
• To escalate concerns to the relevant tiney team teams / departments, exploring possible support tools for childminders. 
• To collaborate and effectively communicate with tiney colleagues to share feedback from visits, and to share any concerns or observations during or post visits promptly, following tiney’s safeguarding procedures.
• To ensure registration visit notes and visit actions are sent out in a concise and timely manner, on the day of the visit. 
• To write up any visit notes /  reports from support / compliance / QA visits in a concise and timely manner and within 7 working days of the visit.
• To contribute and actively participate in consultant meetings, and any meetings with other tiney colleagues. 
• To keep and maintain up to date knowledge and relevant qualifications 
• To promote the reputation of childminder agencies, by being supportive and collaborative in approach, whilst also adhering to legislation, providing critical support. 
• To carry out any other support duties to support the safeguarding and quality team at tiney. 

About you:

• To have appropriate experience in the early years sector (see criteria below)
• To demonstrate strong observational and assessment skills 
• To be able to write reports concisely, to a high level of written English. 
• Must hold or be willing to undertake a valid enhanced DBS check. 
• Hold a valid Paediatric First Aid certificate (preferable)
• Relevant knowledge of safeguarding and child protections. 
• The ability to set priorities, work flexibly, multi task and under pressure
• Have good interpersonal skills and be able to connect, enthuse, inform and motivate childminders.
• A strong and current knowledge of all safeguarding procedures, EYFS requirements and all legal statutory frameworks. 
• A thorough knowledge and understanding of child development theory, and of early years curriculum, evidence based practice, and teaching approaches. 
• Have a solid understanding of managing a childminder setting 
• High levels of motivation and dedication to the role
• Be positive and considerate to others
• Motivated to support the childminder agency model.

Logistics & Benefits

• We're a remote-first company, but we occasionally have in-person meetings in our London office - so being able to travel from time-to-time is important.
• The right kit for the job, including the latest MacBook Pro, second monitor, mouse/keyboard and budget towards a chair and desk.
• 28 days holiday, Life Insurance, Mental Health support, monthly socials and much more!

💜 Our commitment to diversity

A child who wants to learn doesn't care about gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, or any of the other things that sometimes divide, and neither do we. We hire people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it makes us stronger and gives us all a better chance of unlocking the potential of every child.