Learning Disability Community Leader, L'Arche Manchester
ABOUT THE ROLE
Hours of work: 37.5 hours per week (including some evening and weekend working, and regular on-call)
Salary: £47,946 per annum
Reports to: L’Arche UK Regional Leader
Place of work: L’Arche Manchester Community, Manchester M20 4AW. Some travel and overnight stays will be required within the UK
Contract type: Temporary 12-month appointment to cover maternity leave
Closing date: Monday, 2nd March at 12 pm.
Main purpose of the role
The Community Leader is responsible for ensuring that the Community is living the mission of L’Arche, by providing excellent and sustainable care and support services, support for spirituality, and engaging with our neighbours and the wider community around us.
The Community Leader will:
- Lead the Community by responding to the needs, choices and context of our members while being faithful to the L'Arche UK Vision and Values, the L'Arche International Identity and Mission Statement, and to a co-created Community Mandate and plan;
- Maintain and enhance high-quality, person-centred care, support, and housing for people with learning disabilities, both at home and in our day services in partnership with the Registered Manager, the local and national teams, individual circles of support, and external partners.
- Ensure the Community’s financial sustainability through robust financial planning and management. This includes setting budgets and controlling spending, maximising housing occupancy, supporting the negotiation of care contracts, growing our day services and spotting fundraising opportunities.
- Foster a culture that maximises the voice and power for people with learning disabilities, and builds listening and collaboration between Community members. This will include working with an active Community Support Group, Community Gatherings, listening groups, and other forums.
- Lead and manage a committed and engaged leadership team to achieve objectives, set a positive culture, and support the personal and professional growth of our teams.
- Cultivate an open, creative, and inclusive spiritual life, inviting everyone in the Community to deepen their connections.
- Model, advocate for, and embrace the L’Arche ethos of deep, long-term, and mutually transforming relationships between people with and without learning disabilities. Plan and lead a regular calendar of events that build community belonging and help keep people connected.
- Contribute to the national work programmes of L’Arche UK, as part of the National Council, collaborating with Community Leaders of other L’Arche Communities, to share skills, best practice and resources.
- Be a visible representative of L’Arche locally in the wider community, with stakeholders like local authorities, professional organisations, schools, faith communities, and L’Arche world wide.
Key essential criteria
- Senior leadership experience in support to adults with learning disabilities (or transferable skills and experience in a closely-related field).
- Experience leading and managing an organisation or large teams to deliver results, maintain compliance and quality, and to respond to risks and opportunities.
- Experience leading and developing diverse teams to flourish, individually and together.
- Good financial planning skills and experience successfully managing a substantial budget.
- Evidence of the ability to think strategically, and work collaboratively to develop and implement community plans.
- Experience of living or working alongside people with learning disabilities and/or autistic individuals
This role is subject to an enhanced DBS criminal record check.
You may have held these job titles in the past: Registered Manager, Service Manager, Head of Care, Senior Operations Lead, Community Director, Head of Community Services, Country or Regional Lead, Learning Disability Services Manager, Head of Mission and Community Life, Health & Social Care Manager, Local Authority Commissioning Lead;
You can find more details about L'Arche and the Manchester community on our website.
Why join L'Arche?
As well as joining a friendly Community, where you will be well supervised and supported, and benefit from L’Arche’s mentorship programme, these are some other benefits you get by working for us:
- Joining shared meals since cooking and having a meal together is what we are all about
- Enhanced Maternity, Adoption/Surrogacy, Paternity Pay (depending on length of service, details available on request)
- Enhanced sick pay
- Interest free loans and salary advances available
- Free DBS / PVG checks
- Free Employee Assistance Programme available to everyone
- Up to 5 days paid compassionate leave
- Up to 6 days paid (pro rata) for time off for emergency dependents leave
- Specialist bereavement counselling for employees and their family members
- Life Assurance
- Access to the Bike to Work scheme
Discover what makes L’Arche a rewarding place to work—explore more of our employee benefits on our website.
A full job description and person specification can be found in the Recruitment Pack.
To apply, please submit your CV and answer the questions from our online application form.
The closing date is: Monday, 2nd of March at 12 pm.
First interviews (online via Microsoft Teams) are expected to take place during the week beginning the 9th March 2026.
Second round interviews will take on the place week beginning 16th March 2026 and will take place within the Community.
We encourage you not to wait until the closing date to submit your application, as we may begin interviewing strong candidates before then.
We also reserve the right to close the advert early if we receive enough suitable applications.
Please also read our privacy notice for job applicants.
Registered Charity
501 - 1000
Our inclusive communities challenge people to think differently about disability
The client requests no contact from agencies or media sales.
Thank you!
Engagement Officer - South (accessible to Essex)
Responsible to: Engagement Team Manager
Team: Engagement
Hours of work: 35 hours week
Place of work: Home-based – South (accessible to Essex)
Benefits:
- Salary – £27,000 per annum
- 35 hours per week, Monday to Friday
- Home-based (with occasional UK travel)
- Working from home allowance at the standard HMRC rate as detailed on the government website.
- 26 days annual leave plus all Bank Holidays
- bhsf cash plan, 3% pension contribution, death in service insurance
- Learning and development opportunities, Employee Assistance Programme
Job summary
Reporting to the head of growth and sitting within the engagement team you will:
- recruit volunteers by promoting Re-engage’s services,
- develop effective relationships with new and existing referrers such as social prescribers and community link workers
- identify and cultivate new, innovative referral pathways to connect with a broader demographic of seniors experiencing social isolation and loneliness
- support the wider Re-engage team in the delivery of our grant funded projects
Engagement officer tasks and requirements
- Growing and developing our network of referral partners, including social prescribers and link workers, ensuring that Re-engage's work is promoted to people aged 75+ who are experiencing social isolation and loneliness.
- Partnering with communities to create regular, volunteer led, social gatherings for people aged 75+
- Utilise Re-engage's CRM (OPUS) to inform evidence-based, data-driven decision-making to develop effective engagement plans.
- Working closely with the service delivery team ensuring that the right people are recruited and engaged into the right roles, in the right place, and at the right times.
- Collaborating with the communications team ensuring the widest possible publicity for the region’s needs through media and social media opportunities, local press, radio, TV, and online forums.
- Liaising closely with the fundraising team delivering against recruitment targets linked to grants.
- Working with the fundraising team on proposals and grant applications using regional knowledge, identifying local need, and collecting case studies.
- Identifying speaking and presenting opportunities ensuring that Re-engage's work is promoted to referrers.
- Working effectively as part of a regional team, maintaining, and growing all Re-engage services.
- Joint accountability, with colleagues in the region, for the engagement of older people and recruitment of volunteers into Re-engage's portfolio of services
- Carrying out any other reasonable tasks assigned to you by your line manager.
You’ll be a proactive, solution-focused person with passion and skill for networking and building relationships. You’ll be experienced at building and maintaining effective relationships with referrers and social prescribers and will be a flexible, hands-on team player, who will deliver Re-engage's strategic objectives, values, behaviours, and working practices.
Knowledge, skills, and attributes
Essential
- Excellent people skills with a proven ability to network and collaborate with professionals, partners, older people, volunteers, and colleagues.
- Digital first approach with strong ability in all areas of working digitally.
- Experience of working across different sectors and developing links with other organisations.
- Excellent interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills
- Organised and methodical approach to work with strong administrative skills
- Enthusiastic about using technology to its full advantage to engage and recruit older people and volunteers and make data informed decisions.
- Self-motivated, able to work remotely with minimal supervision.
- Experience of working to deadlines and meeting KPIs and targets
- A positive ambassador for Re-engage - committed to an organisation that challenges ageism, empowers volunteers and recognises and values diversity.
- Able to work your own initiative as well as collaboratively as part of a team
- A clear understanding of safeguarding systems and processes and of confidentiality and the implications of GDPR when working with volunteers and older people.
Desirable
- Experience of community engagement or sales, including online engagement.
- Experience working in a target-driven work environment
- Skilled at building and maintaining effective relationships with a wide range of stakeholders from the statutory, commercial, and voluntary sectors to deliver results.
- Interested in learning about loneliness, social isolation, and factors that impact the ageing population.
- Understanding of volunteer journey, including recruitment and engagement.
- Full driving license and own car preferred as this post will require regional travel as and when required and the occasional overnight stay.
- Understanding of, and empathy with, the issues affecting older people who are isolated, and lonely.
About Re-engage
Re-engage is a charity that is positive about older age and committed to reducing loneliness so that people can have social lives and friendship groups however old they are. We inspire and enable meaningful connections and shared experiences within communities across the UK for people over 75 facing loneliness and social isolation.
Our volunteers work together to create better communities and help to enrich the lives of our members. Older people who may have felt very alone now feel valued as individuals, continue to form friendships, and have groups that give support. We make sure that people know they are important well into their old age.
We are proud of our values - positive, innovative, transparent, evidence-based, and accountable - and of our ethos of bringing generations together.
Our vision is a world where no one is ever too old to make friends and enjoy social interaction.
Our mission is to work within communities to end social isolation and loneliness in older people.
Re-engage is committed to growing a staff team that enjoys coming to work every day and gets satisfaction out of being part of delivering significant impact to the lives of older people. We all work remotely, and we don’t let that stop us from getting to know each other and enjoying down time together. Our wellbeing programme includes multiple interest groups: music, books, hobbies etc as well as coffee and catch ups, quizzes, mindfulness, and other group activities. Everyone is encouraged to get involved in working groups and staff networks, all of which contribute to us getting to know each other. We have strong values and promote behaviours that underpin all we do.
How we recruit
Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people from ethnic minority backgrounds are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At Re-engage we are dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we’d encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.
Re-engage uses the Hireful platform which helps remove unconscious bias for a forward-thinking, fair, and objective alternative to traditional hiring. Instead of using your CV alone, we'll be asking you to answer questions to test essential skills needed for the role. The responses are then anonymised and reviewed in a random order by members of our team. This enables us to make data-driven assessments focused on someone's ability, rather than their background.
The Hireful platform also asks some demographic questions before you start your application. We never see these responses with your application. We only see summary statistics to help us check if our candidate pool is balanced and if everyone has an equal chance to get hired irrespective of their background. If you prefer, you can easily opt out of answering these questions.
The closing date is midnight on 15 February 2026, and interviews will be 26th and 27th February and 5th and 6th March 2026
REF-226 247
Thank you!
Chief Executive - Help & Care
Location: Home-based within easy reach of Dorset (regular travel across the region)
Salary: circa £85,000 per annum
Contract: permanent, either full-time basis (37 hours per week) or part-time (30 hours per week). We are happy to discuss flexible working arrangements for part-time hours, including how these are worked across the working week.
Are you an innovative leader who will put communities and social justice at the heart of transforming how health and social care is delivered in Dorset and the south of England?
Help & Care has been supporting communities across Dorset and the south coast since 1985. We deliver person-centred services that promote dignity, independence and connection - from dementia coordination and health coaching to our award-winning Roots gardening programme and social prescribing partnerships. Working with over 25 partners across health, housing and the voluntary sector, we co-produce services that make a real difference to older people, those with long-term conditions, carers and people at risk of isolation.
As our new Chief Executive, you will collaborate with a dedicated Board and a strong, highly motivated team focusing on the following key areas of responsibility:
- Strategic leadership: Define an ambitious, values-led strategy and deliver it, securing long-term impact alongside sustainable financial growth.
- Values leadership: Place Help & Care’s values - social justice, innovation, personal and collaborative - at the heart of decision-making and model them through visible leadership.
- Growth & income diversification: Lead business development to diversify income streams, winning commissioned contracts and developing social-enterprise opportunities to reduce reliance on public commissioning.
- Partnerships & advocacy: Strengthen and sustain senior-level relationships across the NHS, local authorities, commissioners and the voluntary sector; represent Help & Care across systems, media and stakeholder networks.
- Service quality & impact: Embed rigorous monitoring and evaluation so outcome evidence drives commissioning decisions, improves financial performance and enhances the organisation’s reputation.
- People leadership: Inspire, retain and develop a high-performing, compassionate leadership team and workforce, focused on talent development, wellbeing and accountability.
- Governance & financial stewardship: Provide the Board with timely, high-quality reporting, oversee financial recovery or sustainability plans as required, and ensure robust risk, compliance and governance arrangements.
Who you are:
- An experienced CEO or senior director from complex, multi-service health, social care or community organisations, with experience of developing and delivering multi-agency contracts.
- Proven track record of securing commissioned contracts, leading tendering and contract oversight, and developing income diversification, including social-enterprise opportunities.
- Comfortable driving strategic transformation and financial sustainability, with demonstrable expertise in strategic financial management.
- A values-led, collaborative and visible leader with high emotional intelligence and resilience, committed to social justice, person-centred practice and co-production; an effective public representative and mentor.
Why Help & Care?
- Lead a highly respected regional provider with an outstanding track record of co-production and innovation.
- Shape an organisation poised for growth and greater regional influence.
- Hybrid, home-based working, regular travel across Dorset, and the chance to safeguard vital services for local communities.
For full details of the role including how to apply, please download the full appointment brief. For an informal and confidential conversation about this position, please contact Jenny Hills at Harris Hill via apply button with times to speak and (optional but appreciated) a CV or professional profile which will be treated with the strictest confidence
Closing date for applications: 9am, Monday 23rd February 2026. Interviews and assessments on 3rd, 4th and 5th March.
As leading charity recruitment specialists and a certified B Corp, Harris Hill is committed to high and ever-improving standards of equitable and inclusive recruitment. We actively welcome applications from all sections of the community regardless of age, disability, gender, race, religion, sexuality and other protected characteristics.
