Policy & Public Affairs Manager (Wellbeing & Mental Health) (5692)

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Do you have a passion to help Children and Young People and want to make a difference?

Are you an experienced policy and public affairs expert with an ability to lead a policy portfolio with passion, drive and ambition?

If so, we have an exciting opportunity for a Policy and Public Affairs Manager for Wellbeing and Mental Health to join our dynamic and ambitious team.

Permanent contract (following 6-month probation period), working full time (35 hours a week).

Salary: £48,714.18 per annum (National) or £51,666.06 per annum (London)

The Children's Society is currently undertaking a pay and grading review - this review is intended to improve our current approach; we are currently consulting with our recognised trade union and any changes are due to be implemented in April 2025.

Location: Based at any of The Children's Society offices or home based by arrangement with the ability to travel to either our national office at White Cross Studios, Old Street or one of our regional offices (Birmingham, Greater Manchester)

The Children's Society is at an exciting stage of its journey with a clear organisational goal and renewed commitment to reverse the damaging decline in children's wellbeing. This is no ordinary job, with the scale of the crisis needing strong policy and public affairs advocates. As we move towards addressing the strategic goal of reversing the decline in children's wellbeing,we need tocreateinnovativepolicies thatseek toaddress the drivers of low wellbeing, and the structural inequalities young peopleexperience.

The Policy and Public Affairs Manager (Wellbeing and Mental Health) is a high-profile role, both internally and externally. You will be setting the direction for our organisational influencing on young people's wellbeing and mental health. The role will draw on the insights from The Children's Society's extensive service delivery portfolio, alongside active listening of young people to formulate and deliver political influencing strategies. You will be identifying new opportunities for influence and systemic change and developing innovative ways to be able to better advocate with national and local government stakeholders. You will also need to be a confident speaker to act as a spokesperson with media and represent the organisation in external engagements.

This portfolio covers a broad spectrum of wellbeing and mental health. It is a critical role in delivering the organisational aim of overturning the damaging decline in children's wellbeing by 2030. We have a rich history of both delivering direct support to young people for their wellbeing and mental health needs, such as drop-in hubs, and advocating for political change to improve young people's wellbeing.

We are looking for a talented and ambitious manager to build on this rich history, scanning the external environment and working with our services to ambitiously build on our current work, and further enhance our wellbeing and mental health policy portfolio.

As part of this role, you will be responsible for leading and managing the wellbeing and mental health portfolio. This will include setting out the strategic focuses for this area, identifying policy priorities to produce proactive policy and influencing work, and reacting to external events and opportunities. This role will sit within our Policy, Advocacy and Influencing Knowledge Group, reporting to the Director and working alongside fellow Policy & Public Affairs Managers, the Campaigns team and Policy and Public Affairs Officers who work across all three strategic portfolios, with direct line management of one of these Officers.

The individual in this role will be able to utilise multiple techniques and approaches to instigate policy change, including building relationships for the purpose of private influencing, being informed by insight and research to raise awareness of emerging challenges, and to lead related Parliamentary and campaigns activity. As a specialist in the Policy, Advocacy and Influencing Knowledge Group, the role will be instrumental in designing methods to measure the impact of our work and proactively record the impact of our organisational work in this area.

Key responsibilities will be to:

• Lead the policy and public affairs portfolio for wellbeing and mental health, ensuring the production of reasoned arguments on policies affecting children and young people that influence national and local decision makers.
• Lead the development of policy, political influence and strategic partnerships within the portfolio through fostering external and internal relationships that facilitate collaboration, knowledge sharing and influence aligned to organisational priorities.
• Develop policy recommendations that fit the strategic goal, are in the best interest of and ambitious for children, and are inclusive, evidence based and promote social justice and consider inequalities.
• Create opportunities for young people, parent/carers and practitioners to have their voices heard by decision makers to inform policy direction and systems change.
• Provide the evidence to help set the direction for organisational campaigns and external facing activity in relation to wellbeing and mental health, including leading on policy related research projects within the portfolio.
• Direct line management and team group leadership, delivering specific projects and workstreams and contributing to the development of the Policy, Advocacy and Influencing Knowledge Group.

Here are just some of our benefits:

• Flexible working hours: 8 to 4, 9 to 5, 10 to 6, or in between (to be agreed with your manager).
• Family-friendly policies: Including enhanced maternity, paternity, and adoption leave.
• Pension: Stakeholder pension scheme: with company-matched employee contributions of up to 8%.
• 'Xtras': Employee discount scheme offering a range of savings across groceries, fuel, clothing, and holidays.
• Free confidential counselling service: Available to all staff and volunteers.
• 28 days holiday per year, plus bank holidays.

Recruitment Process

The closing date for applications is 23:59 on Friday 21 st March 2025.

If, after 14 days, we have received enough applications we reserve the right to close the vacancy on Wednesday 12 th March onwards.

First interviews will be held on Friday 4 th April.

Second interviews will be held on Friday 11 th April.

About us

The Children's Society has been helping children and young people in this country for over 140 years. We run more than 70 local services that help thousands of young people who desperately need our support, and we lobby and campaign to get laws and policies changed to make children's lives happier and safer. Every day we're changing the lives of children in this country for the better - you can find out more by reading our 'Impact Report' https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/what-we-do/our-impact

The Children's Society is committed to safeguarding and protecting the children and young people that we work with. As such, all posts are subject to a safer recruitment process, including the disclosure of criminal records and vetting checks. We ensure that we have a range of policies and procedures in place which promote safeguarding and safer working practices across our services.

Therefore, candidates will be required to complete an "Employment history template" document prior to interview. The fully completed document should be loaded by the candidate at the point of uploading your CV.

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