Adrian is a Trustee of the AoCPP and Chair of the Practice Learning SIG Chair.  Adrian qualified as a Registered General Nurse (1987), Cardiothoracic Nurse (1989) and Registered Health Visitor (1992) and has worked both in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland (LLR) and East Warwickshire. He has worked in the Safeguarding arena, initially as a Child Protection Nurse Specialist /Named Nurse for Child Protection and from 2004 -2020 as a  Consultant/Designated Nurse for Safeguarding Children (incorporating Adult Safeguarding into role from 2011). Adrian managed the Leicester City Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and hosted Safeguarding Team (working across LLR).  As part of  role  worked with local safeguarding and has chaired a number of inter-agency subgroups, contributed and authored Serious Case Reviews, Adult Learning Reviews and a Domestic Homicide Review  Co-Chaired the LLR Channel Panel for 6 years and worked with partners as a CCG prevent lead.

He is Honorary Principal Lecturer at De Montfort University (1999- 2015) School of Nursing and Midwifery.  In April 2020 took on a new role and is currently Safeguarding Professional Lead for NHS England.  The Midlands NHSE/I safeguarding team covers both East and West Midlands. Adrian is also a Parent Governor of a local school in Leicester.

Rebecca Sage – Safeguarding Professional Lead, NHS England, Midlands

(BSc Adult Nursing, RN, PGDip Specialist Community Public Health Nurse – Health Visitor, RHV, Professional Nurse Advocate)

Rebecca qualified with a Batchelors Degree in Adult Nursing over 20 years ago, starting as a newly qualified nurse in Accident and Emergency. Rebecca’s interest in both health and wellbeing of babies, children, and families as well as safeguarding progressed to explore health from a wellbeing perspective, and she completed a Post graduate diploma in specialist Community Public health and qualified as a Health Visitor. Health visiting across various areas in the West Midlands enabled professional growth and experiences of health promotion, wellbeing, and safeguarding.

Utilising both Nursing and Health Visiting knowledge, skills and experiences inspired Rebecca’s move into a specialist role within safeguarding. As Nurse Practitioner for child death for the county, in collaboration with the Designated Doctor, Rebecca lead the statutory response for all child deaths across the system. Innovating and improving processes and services based on patient experience and feedback.  Rebecca’s passion in improving families experience in bereavement care and support for families as well as preventing future deaths Rebecca developed and implemented many initiates across the system, such as a multi-agency safer sleep training, multi-agency unintentional injuries training and other initiatives such as leading the implementation of parent education programme on Non-Accidental Head injury as well as ICON. Rebeca was proud to win the UHDB trust ‘Go for it fund’ and implemented a pop-up bereavement suite for the paediatric ward to provide a more positive and comfortable environment in the hospital at the end of life or after death.

Throughout Rebecca’s Nursing roles she has supervised and supported professionals in education, development and through times of distress. As such Rebecca has enhanced her expertise in supporting colleagues by completing the master’s module and qualifying as a Professional Nurse advocacy (PNA). As a PNA lead for safeguarding Rebecca is committed to continue to support the national vision in increasing PNAs in the region.

Wendy Thorogood is a retired Designated Nurse Consultant for children with NHS Dorset Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) based in Dorchester. She trained at St Guy's hospital in London, specialising in child and adult nursing intensive care and cardiac and renal transplants.

Wendy delivered the national leadership programme for safeguarding for the Department of Health and worked directly with the NHS Confederation in relation to current changes, including: providing assurance that current and future providers of services are compliant in relation to safeguarding national and local standards; working with Lead Commissioners and the performance team to develop agreed key performance indicators and safety metrics for providers; and identifying and taking appropriate action on key risks and issues across commissioned services that may affect safeguarding of children and young people.

Wendy has also spent time working in a maternity unit in South Africa in a maternity unit and a Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU) in Kent. She has also worked with drug users to improve maternal care - a project that still runs today.