The Child and Family Agency was established on 1^st January 2014 and is responsible for a range of statutory functions including provision of child protection, alternative care, specified regulatory services and a range of family support services.  The Agency has commenced a major improvement programme with significant focus on Practice, Culture and Structure.

The Agency currently has responsibility for a budget of circa €1.2billion and delivers its services through over 5,500 people in 259 locations across the Country.

The Child and Family Agency has responsibility for the following range of services:

• Child Protection and Welfare
• Parenting, Family Support and Early Help Services
• Alternative Care
• Birth Information & Tracing and Adoption
• Tusla Education Support Services (TESS)
• Children’s Service Regulation
• Counselling and Therapeutic Supports

Further information is available on www.tusla.ie

Main Duties and Responsibilities

• To lead, develop, implement and manage a quality, risk and improvement framework for all child and family services within South West
• To ensure that appropriate quality, risk and improvement processes are in place within South West  to support the delivery of effective child and family services and to ensure improved outcomes for children and families.
• To co-ordinate quality and risk management activities within child and family services in South West
• To lead core programmes of work in quality, safety and risk management, including effectiveness, service user and community involvement, risk management and service improvement.
• To provide structured guidance and advice to the Management Team and Regional Working Groups arising from HIQA Inspection Reports. Child Death and National Review Panel Reports. Serious incident reviews, compliments and complaints and service user feedback and recommendations. Serious allegations and concerns and complaints
• To implement and evaluate specific risk management projects in association with Area Managers and services providers, audit staff and other staff of Tusla as appropriate.
• To be responsible for the regional child and family risk register.
• To support local areas and services to develop their risk registers;
• To improve the openness of our culture, in which errors or service failures can be reported and discussed;
• To establish robust mechanisms and incorporate a culture of learning in the region for ensuring that, where learning is identified, the necessary changes are put in place and all corrective actions are closed out so to prevent recurrence;
• To develop a much wider appreciation of the value of the systems approach in preventing, analysing and learning from errors.
• To conduct a training needs analysis for staff and develop and implement an appropriate training programme

Education & Training

•   Maintain standards of practice and levels of professional knowledge by
• participating in continuous professional development initiatives and attendance at courses as appropriate.
• Engage in career and professional development planning.
• Oversee the provision of a framework for the promotion of staff development and training by making recommendations with regard to the ongoing education, mentoring, training and in-service needs of the team.

Health & Safety

• Comply with and contribute to the development of policies, procedures, guidelines and safe professional practice and adhere to relevant legislation, regulations and standards.
• Have a working knowledge of the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) Standards as they apply to the service for example National Standards for Child Protection and Care and comply with associated Tusla – Child and Family Agency protocols for implementing and maintaining these standards as appropriate to the role.
• To support, promote and actively participate in sustainable energy, water and waste initiatives to create a more sustainable, low carbon and efficient health service.

The above Job Description is not intended to be a comprehensive list of all duties involved and consequently, the post holder may be required to perform other duties as appropriate appropriate to the post which may be assigned to him/her from time to time and to contribute to the development of the post while in office.

Applicants must by the closing date of application have the following:

• A relevant professional qualification in a health/social care/business related area

Or

• Have a third level qualification as relevant to the requirements of the role.

And

• Have a minimum of 4 years experience in the area of Child and Family Services

And

• Have the requisite knowledge and ability for the proper discharge of the duties of the post

Health

A candidate for and any person holding the office must be fully competent and capable of undertaking the duties attached to the office and be in a state of health such as would indicate a reasonable prospect of ability to render regular and efficient service.

Character

Each candidate for and any person holding the office must be of good character