Head of communications and external affairs jobs

Job Title - Policy Officer

Contract - 12 months Fixed-Term

Hours - Part Time, 21 hours per week (0.6 FTE)

Salary Range - £15,000 to £19,200 per annum (£25,000 to £32,000 FTE)

Location - Coram Campus, 41 Brunswick Square, London WC1N 1AZ

About Coram

Coram is the UK’s oldest children’s charity founded by Thomas Coram in London helping vulnerable children and young people since 1739. Today, the Coram group helps more than one million children, young people, families and professionals every year by providing access to the skills and opportunities they need to thrive.

Part of the Coram Group, Coram Children’s Legal Centre (CCLC) is the UK’s specialist centre for children’s rights in education, immigration, community care and family law, and provides significant international legal systems consultancy. The centre is located on the Coram Campus in central London with a base in Colchester. We champion access to justice through information and advice, legal practice and representation, policy and strategic litigation. Our Legal Practice Unit provides advice and representation primarily under legal aid contract. Our Policy and Practice Change team promotes practice change through training and capacity building to professionals and secures systems change through research, policy and advocacy.

About the role

This role will contribute to delivering Coram Children’s Legal Centre’s agreed programme of policy work, which focuses on immigration policy, education policy and children’s rights. The post-holder will play an important part in creating policy impact to promote the rights of children in the areas of immigration and education policy. Working with the Head of Policy and Practice Change, the Policy Managers and teams across Coram, the key objective of the role is to deliver policy work that has impact for children and centres the views and experiences of children and young people. The post-holder will work with CCLC’s lawyers, young people, sector colleagues, Government officials, Parliamentarians, the media and wider stakeholders to achieve change for children towards CCLC’s aim of promoting children’s rights in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The role would suit a passionate individual who cares about children’s rights and young people informing policy. The ideal candidate will have experience of volunteering or working at a charity or of advocating for change. We are looking for someone who is interested in policy work in the children’s sector, with a specific interest in our core areas of immigration and education policy and children’s rights. Some knowledge of UK immigration, asylum and nationality law is important and we would welcome candidates with lived experience of the asylum or immigration systems.

This is an office-based role with some remote working after the initial settling in period. There will be some flexibility over working days.

For further information on CCLC please visit our website.

To apply for this role, please click on the 'apply now' button below to complete the application.

Closing date: Sunday 6th September 2026 at 23:55

Test and Interview date: Tuesday 22nd September 2026

Coram is an equal opportunities employer and we believe a diverse workforce enables us to improve the services to the children and families we help. We are genuinely committed to encouraging candidates from all sections of the community we seek to support. This includes those from global majority ethnic backgrounds, those that identify as LGBQT+, those with disabilities, those with lived experience of care, those with neuro-diversity, and those from other groups who are underrepresented at Coram.

If applicants feel comfortable, we would encourage them to draw on lived experience as well as professional experience in their personal statement as part of their application.

We are committed to the safeguarding of children and where appropriate will require the successful applicant to undertake a check from the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Registered Charity No. 312278.