578 Youth and children jobs

About Us

BookTrust is the UK’s largest children’s reading charity. Our work is rooted in the belief that every child, especially those from low-income or vulnerable family backgrounds, deserves the chance to enjoy reading and all the lifelong benefits it brings. Reading is for all children. Our work focuses on children and families in greater need of our support. Reading can help children overcome inequalities before they deepen, giving them the best start in life.

Our work is deeply woven into the wider support system for children and families, enabling our partners to integrate reading support into their services. Together, we respond to local needs and reach families wherever they are, especially in communities where our support can make the greatest difference. 

• We support 1.4 million children and families each year

• We work with over 19,200 settings across education, libraries, health, children’s social care and early help

• We have a network of over 34,000 partners delivering our programmes to change reading behaviours.

To apply, please complete the application form, which includes your CV and a response to the following question in your cover letter: 

Many of our programmes reach families through delivery partners such as health visitors, librarians, early years professionals and teachers. Tell us about a time you designed something where the people using it and the people delivering it were different. How did you understand and balance their needs? What design principles guided your approach, and why? What was the outcome?

Your example can be from any sector. Please keep your answer to a maximum of one page of A4 with minimum font size 11.

Job Summary

We are looking for experienced Designers to lead product and service development priorities as part of our growing and ambitious Design and Innovation Team. 

As a Designer at BookTrust, you will apply human-centred design approaches to online and offline products/services, keeping our audiences at the heart of everything you do. You will work across the design spectrum; working at the front-end of design where you will lead discovery phases and identify opportunities, all the way through to prototyping and launching services/products and maintaining their continuous improvements.

We are looking for multiskilled designers who can run user research, spot opportunities for innovation or continuous improvement, develop prototypes, and support the launch of products/services. At this level, we are looking for Designers who can lead end-to-end design processes, are excellent collaborators, and are confident with the principles of design thinking and human centred design.

Previously, you may have held roles such as service designer, product designer, junior product owner/manager, or worked in innovation teams.

The successful candidates will work in multi-functional teams, drawing on the expertise across BookTrust to support the delivery of our shared organisational strategy. You could be involved in projects such as; leading the next phase of development for our Story Explorers programme, developing a new offer for children with English as an additional language, and/or new approaches to inspiring teachers to engage with BookTrust’s primary school resources. 

We will be interviewing on a rolling basis and encourage early applications. The final application deadline is Friday 30th of October at 11:30pm.