Deputy Head of Safeguarding – Maternity Cover

Job Title: Deputy Head of Safeguarding UK - Maternity Cover Reports to: Head Safeguarding Direct Reports: Safeguarding Manager Remote based Closing date: 3/6/26 Kooth is a fast-growing, mission-driven organization transforming access to digital mental health support across the UK and the US. Listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE:KOO), our mission is to create welcoming, accessible spaces for personalized mental health care that helps young people thrive. Working alongside the NHS, Kooth is now the UK’s largest digital mental health platform for young people aged 10–25, built on over one million hours of professional support delivered to youth across the country. In the US, we bring this mission to life through Soluna — California’s first statewide digital behavioral health platform for 13–25-year-olds — providing nearly immediate access to coaching, care navigation, peer support, and self-guided tools that help young people build resilience and access support when they need it most. At Kooth, we’re more than a digital service. We’re purpose-driven, people-centered, and grounded in our values: Alongside You, Flexible, Compassionate, Committed, and Safe. If you’re looking for meaningful work with measurable impact, you’ll find it here. Learn more at Kooth and Soluna. Role Objective To support the Head of Safeguarding in ensuring the effective implementation of safeguarding and user safety frameworks, and, lead the safeguarding team’s operations function. Split of the role Safeguarding - 40% Stakeholder Management - 20% Management & Leadership - 20% Clinical Governance - 10% Training - 10% Main responsibilities:  Support the Head of Safeguarding in leading on strategy to ensure that the organisation meets its responsibilities to safeguard CYP and adults and is continuously developing excellence in safeguarding within digital mental health Deputise for the Head of Safeguarding for the organisation across all areas of safeguarding responsibility, enabling an open culture where safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility Act as the lead professional for specific safeguarding areas (eg. PREVENT, Domestic Abuse) as delegated by the Head of Safeguarding Manage the integration of Kooth’s services with relevant local multi-agency safeguarding structures and provide oversight of the safeguarding team’s policies, processes, advice and guidance for multi-agency working  Support, and in some cases lead, the on-going development of safeguarding policies and procedures, ensuring they are evidence based, effective and meet the appropriate legislation/statutory guidance and support the implementation and communication of these within the organisation. Liaise across the organisation in organising and ensuring all commissioned areas have their contractual and statutory safeguarding reporting and auditing completed to a high quality, within deadlines. Support in ensuring that any relevant local area Safeguarding CYP/Adult partnership policies, regional and national guidelines and recommendations are disseminated and embedded into practice. Ensure organisational compliance in safeguarding required by legal, regulatory and national policy standards and demonstrate this through effective auditing, data collection and report writing. Attend relevant Safeguarding board meetings with local commissioning groups as appropriate and act as a reference point for partner agencies involved in Safeguarding to ensure advice and liaison is co-ordinated and effective. Manage the Clinical Team’s On Call service ensuring it remains consistently operational to a high standard Line manage the Safeguarding Manager and provide operational leadership to the Safeguarding Team, continuously developing excellence in safeguarding advice, guidance and liaison. Proactive engage in regular safeguarding supervision and appraisal to enhance self-development and career pathway and to ensure that practice is effective and compliant with the most up to date guidance. Co-produce and quality assure safeguarding related training, in conjunction with the Clinical Training Team in providing specialist training across the organisation within relevant areas of specialism. Lead the operational response for the company’s User Safety Incident Response Framework, ensuring all incidents are sufficiently investigated and generate learning, in line with the NHS PSIRF Ensure all learning from user safety incidents and safeguarding quality assurance processes is sufficiently leading to the necessary safety improvements as approved by the Head of Safeguarding and executive and board level safeguarding representatives. This is not an exhaustive list and postholder may be required to complete additional duties with scope of capability as per the clinical team needs. Requirements Experience / Qualifications Essential: Registered safeguarding professional (eg. Social Worker, Health professional, Teacher or Police Officer) Minimum of 6 years post qualification experience. Demonst