Philip Winterbottom appointed Cygnet’s new Head of Safeguarding

We are pleased to welcome Philip Winterbottom as Cygnet’s new Head of Safeguarding.

Phil qualified as a Mental Health Nurse in 2007 from the University of Surrey. He has worked for many years in various mental health and Social Care settings from working as a Healthcare Assistant in acute admissions through to managing services. He has been working for the Priory Group as their Group Designated Nurse for Safeguarding since 2019 having worked as a service-level Safeguarding Lead and a Regional Lead before this.

Recently Phil completed a MSc in Child Protection and Safeguarding Adults, he used his dissertation to create a new model of ‘Reflective Relational Leadership and Management’ which he now teaches to Masters students as an Honorary Fellow of the university.

Phil works closely with colleagues across the country, commissioners and NHS England in various networks, including the Safeguarding Adults National Network, the Safeguarding Children National Network for Named Practitioners and is also representing the independent sector on the Liberty Protection Safeguards National Clinical Reference Group alongside NHSE, the DHSC, CQC and Royal Colleges.

David Wilmott, Cygnet’s Director of Nursing, said: “Phil brings a huge amount of experience and I am delighted to welcome him to Cygnet. Safety and protection are key to the delivery of excellent care and we all share a collective responsibility to ensure the principles and duties of safeguarding are applied. I look forward to working with Phil in taking forward the safeguarding agenda across all our services.”

Phil said “I’m very exciting to be joining Cygnet as the Head of Safeguarding, we are privileged to care for and support our service users and safeguarding is one of the golden threads of safety that should run through the whole organisation. I’m looking forward to meeting everyone, learning about our services, structures and identifying opportunities to strengthen that thread and the support available for our service users and colleagues.”

Join our Safeguarding team

We’re also very excited to announce that the central safeguarding team will be expanding and we are recruiting a second Named Professional for Safeguarding (Adults and Children) alongside a Safeguarding Administrator to support the team. Please follow the links for the job adverts and if you have any questions, email [email protected].

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