Evaluation and research manager jobs

The Belay Foundation supports adoptive, kinship and special guardianship families raising children who have experienced early developmental trauma, often alongside neurodiversity. Founded in 2020 from lived experience, Belay offers something many families struggle to find elsewhere: practical, in-home support and expert guidance that’s genuinely trauma-responsive, delivered by people who understand what these families are living through.

Why now? - Belay has just spent a year strengthening its foundations - redesigning services, building organisational capacity and setting an ambitious growth plan. The groundwork is done. What we need now is a permanent CEO with the vision to take a small, high-impact charity and turn real momentum into lasting change - for families and for how the sector understands and responds to developmental trauma.

About the role - You’ll provide strategic and financial leadership across a small team, working closely with an exceptional Board and Belay’s Founder, who remains closely involved as Services Director. You’ll lead fundraising and income diversification, shape Belay’s public voice and ensure the organisation’s trauma-responsive, DDP-informed model continues to deliver real impact as it scales.

This is a rare chance to take the helm of an organisation with an innovative model, a loyal community and genuine room to grow - and to leave your mark on how the UK supports some of its most vulnerable children and families.

This is a home‑based role, but applicants must be permanently based, and have the right to work, in the United Kingdom. For legal, tax, and operational reasons, we cannot consider applications from outside the UK.

Please see the CEO Application Pack for further details, including the full job description and the application/ interview process.

Job Title: Senior Press Officer

Salary: £33,268 - £36,000 dependent on experience

Contract Type: Permanent, full-time (35 hours).

Location: We fully support flexible working, from our superb offices in Holborn and from home. We do require staff to spend 20% of their time in the office. This is subject to role requirements.

About us

Do you want to change healthcare for the better?

Join the Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCS England) and you will be part of a professional membership organisation and registered charity that is committed to advancing surgical care.

We provide world-class education, assessment and development to 30,000 surgeons and dental surgeons at all stages of their career. Our vision is to see excellent surgical care for everyone. We do this by setting professional standards, facilitating research and championing the best outcomes for patients.

Our heritage home in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Holborn

Nestled in the heart of bustling London, our beautiful heritage building in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Holborn, offers an easily accessible location steeped in history. Now transformed into a centre of excellence for surgery, it provides a welcoming place for all our members to train, meet or network, wherever they live and work.

About the role

We are looking for an outstanding Senior Press Officer to work in our fast-paced press office, helping run it to the highest standard. RCS England is one of the most high-profile health commentators in the UK. You will regularly see us advocating for patients and the surgical workforce in the national press. Candidates should have experience of successfully pitching stories to national media and know what makes a good health story. You will have a fluent writing style and be confident working with senior stakeholders to brief them before interviews.

Responsibilities

• Handle incoming enquiries and provide accurate, timely and appropriate responses, briefing journalists in line with RCS England key messages and priorities.
• Participate in an out-of-hours rota for media enquiries. Time off in lieu is offered for significant out-of-office hours worked.
• Research, write and distribute press releases, features, letters and other editorial material.
• Draft articles, quotes and opinion pieces on behalf of RCS England spokespeople.
• Provide press office support to the Faculty of Dental Surgery and its Dean, as required.
• Brief the President, Council Members and senior managers on issues arising in the media.
• Act as the press lead for key projects such as RCS England guidance or campaigns. Devising and implementing communications plans, sharing project updates with the wider communications team, and maintaining a good understanding of surgical and wider health issues.
• Horizon scan for media opportunities and develop your own ideas for health coverage based on data, insights or RCS England priorities.
• Brief, support and prepare RCS England spokespeople for media interviews.
• Establish and maintain professional and trusted relationships with national and trade journalists.
• Represent the RCS England at internal and external meetings, and maintain professional relationships with press and communications leads at stakeholder organisations.
• Monitor daily media coverage relevant to surgery and the RCS England. This includes pulling together the team’s daily press cuts to be shared with Council members, Trustees, and key RCS England staff by 10am (subject to urgent media enquiries).
• Maintain and update the media sections of the RCS England website, working with the web team to develop rich digital content. Actively participate in developing our social media profile using Twitter, Facebook, and commissioning and editing relevant blogs.
• Produce evaluation reports of media coverage and communications activity.
• Undertake such duties appropriate to the grade, as required by your line manager.

About you

• Degree educated or proven extensive experience that can demonstrate the essential criteria below.
• At least two years’ experience of working in a press office.
• Experience of writing and editing for a variety of media including print and the internet.
• Good working knowledge of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint packages.
• Demonstrable experience of placing stories in the media.
• Rigour in researching and reviewing content: able to identify key points, summarise findings and report data and conclusions accurately.
• Excellent writing skills: able to write fluent, compelling copy free from grammatical or other errors.
• Excellent telephone manner: diplomatic and persuasive verbal communication skills.
• Able to prioritise effectively and deliver work to deadlines.
• Demonstrable understanding of journalists’ needs and priorities.
• Ability to understand policy documents and formulate a media response.
• Collaborative and inclusive approach to build relationships with colleagues across the organisation, to encourage timely information sharing with the press office.
• Diplomacy and persuasiveness, to foster the trust of senior spokespeople you are briefing and advising.
• Excellent interpersonal skills and integrity, to protect the College’s reputation for providing accurate and reliable information to the media.
• Strong prioritisation skills and a flexible approach to respond to changing priorities and needs and manage reactive queries.
• Enthusiasm and creativity to seek out interesting stories and pitch them.

What’s in it for you?

• 27 days paid holiday + bank holidays and up to 4 college closure days over the festive period & other leave entitlements (carers leave, fertility treatment leave, etc.)
• Hybrid and flexible working. We require staff to spend a minimum of 20% of their time in the office, subject to role requirements.
• Enhanced contributory pension scheme
• Equal access to enhanced parenthood leave
• A range of staff and peer networks
• Employee health and wellbeing committed (Healthcare cash plan, menopause friendly, disability confident employer, mental health first aiders, EAP etc.)
• Retail discount platform
• Sabbatical and volunteering opportunities
• Variety of learning and development opportunities

Interested Candidates:

If you wish to apply or if you have any questions about this position please email your CV together with a

cover letter to [email protected].

Any personal data collected from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us in accordance with our recruitment processes. If unsuccessful in your application, your information will be held by us on our database for a period of 6 months before deletion. If you would like your information removed sooner, please contact [email protected]

Closing date: Thursday 27 August 2026

The Royal College of Surgeons of England is an Equal Opportunities Employer. We are open to all talent and we actively ensure that all qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment without regards to age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.

The Royal College of Surgeons of England is committed to protecting your privacy. We are registered as a data controller with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). All College employees are responsible for records held,

created and used as part of their work for the College including patient/client, corporate and administrative records. Records are managed according to the requirements of the

Data Protection Act 2018 and ensure confidentiality. The College ensures that staff are trained to handle the information you submit to us with care and discretion, seeking advice where necessary.

Role Overview

This is an exciting time to be joining the charity! Our new strategy focuses on growth and long-term sustainability, with ambitious plans to extend our reach and impact nationally and to expand and diversify our services. Our long-term ambition for the future is a transformed landscape of multi-disciplinary therapeutic support in schools, with UP acknowledged and recognised as a thought-leader, innovator, preferred collaborator and convener.

We are entering a period of significant growth and change driven by our new strategy, and the Clinical Director will play a pivotal role in shaping the evolution of our clinical approach, delivering our strategic priorities, and representing UP as a credible and influential clinical leader.

You will provide strategic clinical leadership and robust clinical governance across the charity, ensuring our services remain safe, effective, evidence-based and responsive to need. You will champion high standards of multidisciplinary practice, leading and developing our clinical workforce, providing clinical oversight and support, driving improvement and innovation, and building infrastructure, capability and clinical excellence needed to support our future growth.

This is a hands-on leadership role that combines strategic vision with operational delivery. While the role balances both strategic and operational responsibilities, we anticipate that, through building internal capability and capacity, the focus will evolve over time towards a greater emphasis on strategic leadership, innovation, growth and impact. There is real opportunity to make this role your own.

We are looking for a strategic, confident and adaptable leader who will thrive in a growing organisation and enjoy working innovatively and collaboratively. You will be able to inspire confidence and credibility across a wide range of audiences, be passionate about the value of multidisciplinary working to achieve the very best outcomes for children and families, and be motivated by the opportunity to lead meaningful and lasting change.

Making your application:

• Please make your application by submitting your CV, along with a cover letter which clearly demonstrates how you meet the person specification criteria (we will be shortlisting candidates closely against the person specification).
• Interviews will be arranged on a rolling basis, as suitable applications are received. Please note that we may close the advert prior to the closing date, so please don’t delay submitting your application! We will keep you updated on your application by email, and will let you know about anything you will need to prepare if you are shortlisted.
• For further information, or if you require any reasonable adjustments at any stage of the application process, please contact us.
• We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expect all those who work with us to share this commitment. It's a criminal offence for a person to apply to work with a group from which they have been barred from working.

We are looking for a Community Organiser, based in Manchester, to work with us on a short-term, freelance basis to organise with people in debt.

Deadline for applications: Tuesday 1 September, 9am
Location: Manchester
Contract: Three days per week for four months
Start date: as soon as possible
Rate: £200 per day, to be invoiced on a freelance, self-employed basis.

You will support members of our Manchester campaign group, led by people with lived experience of the debt crisis, to demand and win policy change to end the use of bailiffs for council tax debt collection. And work directly with  allies in Manchester and officials at Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and target councils.

Please read the role profile (.pdf) for full details.

Application process: please email your CV and a covering letter outlining how you meet the skills and experience in the role profile by 9am on Tuesday 1 September.

If you have a question about any aspect of the role, please do get in touch. 

We welcome applications from people from all backgrounds. We particularly encourage applications from people who are underrepresented in the sector, including black and brown people, women and non-binary people, people who identify as LGBTQIA+ and people who identify as working class or have done in the past.