Service user involvement volunteer volunteer jobs in Birmingham

This is a home-based role, working Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Applications are welcome from candidates based outside Belfast, provided they are resident in Northern Ireland and able to commute to the Belfast office if required.

The External Affairs Manager plays a pivotal role in empowering people with sight loss to live the life they choose. This position leads the development of policy and campaigns within the country, aligning with Guide Dogs’ strategic objectives. Working collaboratively with the central policy, public affairs, and campaigns team, as well as the country leadership team, the role builds strategic partnerships with government bodies, local authorities, societies, and other key organisations. This ensures Guide Dogs remains informed and influential on all policy initiatives affecting the organisation and its stakeholders.

The post holder will be responsible for the day‑to‑day leadership, management and oversight of a team.

The post-holder is responsible for shaping policy positions, drafting responses to consultations from councils, combined authorities, and devolved governments, and driving impactful campaigns at a regional level. A key focus is increasing the involvement of blind and partially sighted people in advocacy and campaigning.

Additionally, the role leads the implementation of Guide Dogs’ regional marketing and communications strategy across the Devolved Nations. This includes raising brand awareness, engaging diverse audiences—service users, families, volunteers, donors, and the public—and delivering integrated communications plans that strengthen Guide Dogs’ presence and impact.

Key Responsibilities

Policy Development

• Lead the creation of country-specific policy and position papers, ensuring alignment with organisational strategy.
• Prepare responses to consultation papers from devolved administrations, local government, and regional bodies.
• Represent Guide Dogs on committees, working groups, and forums, staying informed on policy issues impacting the organisation and its service users.

Public Affairs

• Build and influence relationships with key stakeholders, including elected representatives and senior officials.
• Represent Guide Dogs at Government Scrutiny Committees and cross-party groups.
• Act as the primary liaison with local government and statutory agencies.

Campaigns & Influence

• Strategically lead and coordinate campaigns at a country level, ensuring alignment with devolved policy priorities.
• Develop and deliver campaigns addressing local needs of the visually impaired community.
• Foster partnerships within the Third Sector to build consensus and amplify Guide Dogs’ strategic aims. 

Leadership & People Management

• Provide strong leadership to local staff and volunteers, promoting best practice and knowledge-sharing.
• Oversee recruitment, performance management, and compliance with safeguarding policies.
• Ensure high levels of engagement through effective communication and leadership.

Financial Accountability

• Support fundraising initiatives and monitor operational budgets to ensure efficiency and compliance.

Diversity & Inclusion

• Champion Guide Dogs’ diversity agenda, ensuring services are inclusive and accessible.
• Work with external partners to create a more inclusive environment for people with sight loss.

How to apply 

Further details on the full role are attached below. When you are ready to apply, submit an online application form via this page.

If you would like to have an informal conversation about the role before applying, or require any accessibility support to apply, our friendly recruitment team is ready and waiting to help.

As part of your application ensure you provide evidence and examples of how your skills & experience meet the criteria as set out in the attached job description. You will also be asked to complete a few job-specific questions as part of this application process, so please be prepared to write your answers to these questions.

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

Guide Dogs welcomes applications from all sections of the community and actively encourages diversity to maximise achievements, creativity and good practice. We positively welcome and seek to ensure we achieve diversity in our workforce and that all job applicants and employees receive equal and fair treatment, regardless of age, race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability or nationality. 

As a Disability Confident Employer, we are proud, whenever possible, to offer an interview to all candidates that meet our selection criteria, and who indicate they wish their application to be considered under our Disability Confident interview commitment. For more details, visit our careers site.

If you are successful you will need to provide evidence of your right to work in the UK via our digital ID checking supplier; in addition, we cannot offer visa sponsorship at this time.

Safeguarding

Guide Dogs is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all children, young people and adults at risk of harm with whom we work. We expect all our employees and volunteers to fully share this commitment.

At Guide Dogs, we believe in fair and equitable hiring practices. A criminal record will not automatically disqualify an applicant from consideration for a position. Each case will be evaluated individually, taking into account the nature of the offense, its relevance to the role, and the time that has passed since the incident. We encourage all candidates to disclose relevant information, and we assure you that it will be handled confidentially and fairly.

Guide Dogs follow Safer Recruitment practices to ensure we are safeguarding the vulnerable people we work with. As part of this, we require a full work history with any gaps accounted for & a minimum of 2 professional referee details fully covering the past 5 years. If you are applying for a disclosure role, please note that you will be required to undergo an enhanced DBS check and sign up to the DBS update service.

For high volumes of applications, we reserve the right to close adverts earlier than advertised.

Head of Product - Alzheimer's Society

Nearly one million people in the UK are living with dementia. How they access support, information and hope increasingly depends on the digital products we build. As Head of Product at Alzheimer's Society, you'll set the strategic vision for the digital services that shape their experience. You'll also lead the multidisciplinary teams that bring those services to life.

Why this role is important:

Digital products aren't just part of our work at Alzheimer's Society, they're central to how we reach people who need us. As Head of Product within our Technology directorate, you'll own the vision and strategy for our digital experiences. From the platforms where people find information in moments of crisis, to the tools that enable our services, campaigns, and fundraising user journeys.

This is a leadership role with real breadth and impact. You'll shape investment decisions across the digital portfolio. You'll set the standards for accessibility and user-centred design, and build the operating models that enable product teams to solve the right problems. But you'll also lead people. A multidisciplinary function spanning product management, delivery management, user-centred design, and matrix leadership of engineering teams. Your role is to create the environment where these disciplines don't just coexist but genuinely collaborate to deliver outcomes that matter.

You'll work at the intersection of strategy and practice. That means setting direction and guarding principles, while staying close enough to product teams to understand the trade-offs they're navigating. It means partnering with senior stakeholders across the organisation, from service delivery to fundraising. It means ensuring that our digital strategy serves the whole Society. And it means championing the voices of people affected by dementia through our Involvement team, ensuring lived experience shapes every product decision.

The digital landscape is changing rapidly, and so are the possibilities for how we support people. You'll balance the discipline of keeping existing products reliable and secure with the curiosity to explore what's emerging. Including AI-enabled services where they can genuinely improve reach or quality of support.

About you

You're an ambitious, values-led digital leader who sees product thinking as a powerful tool for social impact. You excel at developing clear digital visions aligned to organisational objectives. You understand that great products emerge from genuinely collaborative, multidisciplinary teams working together from discovery through to live service improvement. You bring fresh thinking to digital challenges and know that user-centred, outcome-led practice enables organisations to achieve their goals.

You'll have:

- Significant experience leading a multidisciplinary digital function, including product management, delivery management, and user-centred design.
- Proven track record of leading complex digital portfolios using agile, outcome-led and evidence-informed delivery approaches, with demonstrable ability to develop and deliver clear digital strategy aligned to organisational objectives.
- Good understanding of user-centred design and continuous improvement, with experience embedding these practices at organisational scale.
- Significant experience balancing user needs, organisational priorities, operational constraints and technical sustainability, with ability to define meaningful outcomes and success measures.
- Evidenced experience of working in partnership with software engineering, platform and data teams within a matrix-managed environment.
- Good communication and stakeholder management skills, with the proven ability to influence senior leaders and engage non-technical audiences.
- Experience of budget management, resource planning, and working with external suppliers to achieve value for money.
- A champion for diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging, with experience embedding these values in leadership, culture and ways of working, and with a strong understanding of accessibility standards and ethical digital practice.

What you'll focus on:

- Owning and leading the Society-wide digital strategy, defining strategic outcomes, investment priorities and success measures for the overall digital portfolio.
- Leading delivery of strategically aligned digital products that support information, services, campaigning, fundraising and internal operations.
- Establishing and continuously improving a modern product operating model, influencing governance, funding, planning and decision-making processes across the Society.
- Leading, inspiring and developing your multidisciplinary digital function, ensuring digital capability, skills and structures evolve to meet future organisational needs, with clear professional standards across disciplines.
- Building strong, trusted relationships with senior stakeholders, communicating complex concepts clearly to executives, trustees and external partners.
- Championing accessible, inclusive and ethical design for people affected by dementia, working closely with our Involvement team.
- Managing the overall digital budget and strategic supplier relationships, ensuring effective prioritisation, resourcing, transparency and value for money.
- Providing matrix leadership to software engineering teams, working in close partnership with engineering and platform leaders to create conditions for genuinely collaborative teams working from problem discovery through to live service improvement.

We are looking for someone who shares our values of Determination, Compassion, Trusted Expertise, and Better Together. Are you ready to bring strategic digital product leadership to one of the UK's largest health and care charities? Can you combine technical expertise with compassionate, mission-driven leadership to ensure our digital services help end the devastation of dementia?

Important dates

The deadline for applications will be 12:00 PM on Tuesday 24th February 2026.
There will be three stages of interviews that will take place:

- In person at Crutched Friars, Tower Hill, London on W/C 2nd March 2026.
- A 45-minute session with our Involvement Panel taking place via Video Call on W/C 9th March 2026.
- A final 45-minute interview taking place via Video Call on W/C 9th March 2026.

There will be a presentation to prepare for the first interview which we will ask you to present in person at our London HQ.

About Alzheimer's Society

Dementia is the UK's biggest killer. One in three people born in the UK today will develop dementia in their lifetime.

At Alzheimer's Society, we're the UK's leading dementia charity and the only one to tackle all aspects of dementia by giving help and hope to people living with dementia today and in the future. We give vital support to people facing the most frightening times of their lives, while also funding groundbreaking research and campaigning to make dementia the priority it should be.

Together with our supporters, we're working towards a world where dementia no longer devastates lives.

Our values make sure that our focus is clear for the challenges and opportunities ahead and remind us of what we all stand for.

Our commitment to Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging

We need to ensure the voices around our table better reflect and understand the communities we exist to serve. We strongly encourage individuals to apply who have a disability, impairment or health condition or individuals who identify as Black, Asian or from another minority ethnic background, as these groups are currently under-represented at Alzheimer's Society.  

We want everyone we work with, as a colleague, volunteer, supporter, or someone we support, to feel included and that they belong at Alzheimer's Society. 

Our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy here along with our internal employee forum and Employee Lived Experience network groups help us promote inclusion and belonging, becoming an engaged and inclusive organisation for all our people. 

Our hiring process

During your recruitment process we want to make sure that you bring your whole self and can be at your best. We are working hard to ensure our recruitment process is as inclusive as possible, so please do inform us of your experience and anything you think we could do better by completing our candidate survey when you apply.  Please also contact Alzheimer's Society Talent Acquisition Team via [email protected] for application support or any adjustments you might need.

To ensure fairness and consistency to select the best candidate for this role, all our applications are anonymised up until an interview has been confirmed. We recognise the benefits of AI, but if you're considering using it to submit your application, we encourage you to reflect on the value it truly adds. AI tools often lack the personal touch and authenticity that set candidates apart. We want to hear your unique perspective, experiences, and skills, so we encourage you to showcase them in your own voice.

We try to avoid closing roles early where possible, however if we receive a high volume of applications, we may close earlier than the advertised closing date. Should this occur, we will aim to provide you with at least 48 hours' notice.

We are committed to safer recruitment and ensuring the welfare of those we work with, due to the nature of some of our roles, we might need to carry out a Criminal Record Check at the relevant level. You can read more information via our Website.

Giving back to you

Our employees work hard every day to make a true difference in people's lives. We are proud to support them with a range of benefits, recognition and many options for working agilely, all contributing to a strong work life balance. We also have various learning programmes to support you in your development and help you grow to realise your potential and shape a career with Alzheimer's Society. 

You can also visit our Working for Us pages, which give you more information about what it's like to be an employee at the Society.