Clinical Lead (Nurse)

Salary: £49,387.00 per annum plus £700 on call allowance

Location: Rushden, Northamptonshire

Contract/Hours: Permanent/Full Time – 37 hours per week

• 29 days annual leave plus bank holidays and options to buy or sell leave
• Flexible Staff discounts and Blue Light Card eligibility with 15,000 national retailers’ maternity, adoption, and paternity packages
• Pension with up to 7% matched employer contribution with included life assurance cover
• discounts
• We’re offering a highly competitive rewards package, plus a comprehensive supervision and development programme to continue your professional development.
• We are a Real Living Wage accredited employer
• Free parking on site

Why Action for Children?

We are one of the largest children’s charities in the UK and have been making a difference to the lives of the UK’s vulnerable children for over 150 years.

About the Service

The Squirrels is a warm, welcoming respite service for children with learning and physical disabilities and complex health needs, offering our children a true home‑from‑home environment. We offer overnight short breaks for up to 4 children at a time, ensuring every child receives highly personalised care in a calm nurturing environment.

Our warm, homely setting is centred around a welcoming communal living and dining space that creates opportunities for connection, comfort, and joy. At the heart of everything we do is our exceptional nursing and care team, delivering compassionate, dignified, and high‑quality care that families can trust.

At The Squirrels, we don’t just provide care we create meaningful experiences, build confidence, and support brighter futures.

A bit about the role

This is an exciting and rewarding opportunity for an experienced and passionate Clinical Lead Nurse to take on a pivotal leadership role within our specialist respite service.

Blending hands‑on clinical expertise with strategic leadership, you will play a key role in shaping and driving outstanding care for children with learning disabilities and complex health needs.

Working closely with the Registered Manager, you will deputise in their absence and lead on:

• Inspiring, supervising, and developing a skilled nursing team
• Driving clinical excellence through governance, audit, and continuous improvement
• Ensuring full compliance with Care Quality Commission (CQC) standards, with a focus on Treatment of Disease, Disorder and Injury (TDDI) requirements

You will champion a nurse‑led model of care, ensuring staff competencies are robustly assessed, training is up to date, and clinical audit processes are embedded and effective.

Your leadership will be central to maintaining an inspection‑ready, high‑performing service, giving confidence to families, commissioners, and regulators alike.

If you’re looking for a role where you can lead, influence, and truly make a difference every day, this is a unique opportunity to do just that.

This role requires strong paediatric and learning disability nursing experience, excellent leadership skills, and a clear commitment to improving outcomes for children with complex needs within an Ofsted and CQC (TDDI) –regulated setting.

How you’ll help to create brighter futures

• Lead, manage and develop the nursing team, ensuring the delivery of safe high quality, evidence‑based care for children with learning disabilities and complex health needs.
• Deputise for the registered manager, providing clinical and operational leadership and continuity of service.
• Maintain oversight of clinical governance, including audits, risk management, staff competence and quality improvement initiatives to ensure full compliance with the CQC Treatment of Disease, Disorder and Injury (TDDI) standards.
• Lead on care planning, outcome measurement and service improvement to enhance children’s well‑being and development, supported by exemplary clinical record‑ keeping.
• Work collaboratively with children, families, carers, commissioners and external professionals to deliver truly child focused, nurse‑led care.

Let’s talk about you

You’re a confident and compassionate professional who knows how to bring out the best in people. You build trust quickly, lead with credibility, and inspire teams to deliver exceptional care.

• Registration as a Nurse (ideally in learning disabilities and/or children’s nursing), with a degree‑level qualification and a recognised teaching and assessing award
• Strong experience supporting children with learning disabilities and complex health needs in community or residential settings
• Proven clinical leadership skills, including supervision, training, competency sign‑off, and audit
• A solid understanding of safeguarding, child protection, and professional accountability
• Excellent communication, organisation, and leadership skills, with the flexibility to support across shifts when needed
• You’ll have a genuine passion for improving outcomes and making a lasting difference in children’s lives.

Please note we are unable to offer sponsorship for this role.

Diversity, equality and inclusion

At Action for Children, we're dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace. We actively encourage applications from Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic and disabled candidates as they are under-represented within Action for Children. We want to take deliberate and purposeful action to ensure equal opportunity to all groups in society and for Action for Children.

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