Head of Politics and Public Affairs

Closing date: 26th November 2023

Save the Children UK has an exciting opportunity for a dynamic and influential individual with extensive political operational experience to join us as our Head of Politics and Public Affairs where you will lead and develop a team of strategic political experts to develop and deliver high-impact change strategies.

About Us

Save the Children UK believes every child deserves a future. In the UK and around the world, we work every day to give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm.  When crisis strikes, and children are most vulnerable, we are always among the first to respond and the last to leave.  We ensure children's unique needs are met and their voices are heard. We deliver lasting results for millions of children, including those hardest to reach.

 

About the role

As the Head of Politics & Public Affairs, you will lead team of experienced public affairs advisers to create and implement high-impact change strategies. You will identify lobbying opportunities and enable colleagues and partners to exploit them fully using powerful evidence, trusted relationships, and innovative and creative tactics to secure change for children.

In this role, you will: 

• Lead Save the Children’s relationships with the UK government and other soft-power institutions,

·         Represent Save the Children externally, actively networking and building constructive relationships with multilateral institutions, government ministers, special advisers, priority parliamentarians, senior officials, political parties, opinion formers and media to build Save the Children’s influence and profile.

 

·         Maintain (and share with other teams an ongoing overview of political trends and insight to: inform organisational and partner advocacy priorities; drive the political influencing of Save the Children and partners; and direct and quality assure the work of colleagues. 

 

• Lead and manage a high performing team of public affairs specialists who are provide political insight and advice to the rest of the organisation and our partners. Lift individual and collective capability by setting direction and clear objectives; supervising progress and giving regular feedback; and offering support and motivation, as well as opportunities for staff development. 
• Lead an engagement strategy with key UK soft power institutions; identifying and creating opportunities to influence policy and processes. Ensure a coordinated, complementary and consistent approach to advocacy on domestic and international issues. 
• Forge new and innovative partnerships for influence and manage existing relationships with other civil society organisations and political actors.  

About you

To be successful, it is important that you have:

·         The ability to think and plan strategically, with evidence of securing significant policy changes through the successful design and execution of lobbying strategies in the UK or in multilateral organisations. 

 

·         Significant operational experience and understanding of UK political structures, processes and trends in Westminster, Whitehall and Fleet Street. 

 

• Significant experience of executing integrated change strategies covering research, advocacy, policy rebuttal, public mobilisation, insight work and media planning. 

 

• Experience of line managing high-performing teams, supervising, motivating and developing direct reports, and leading multi-disciplinary project teams.  
• Outstanding communication skills with the ability to synthesise large amounts of technical information and experience of producing briefings, blogs, Op Eds, speeches and other policy and comms products to an excellent standard under time pressure.
• Commitment to Save the Children’s vision, mission and values.

 

What we offer you:

Working for a charity provides one of the best benefits there is – a sense of purpose and reward for helping others. However, we understand the importance of giving back to our employees to ensure a happy and healthy working environment and work/life balance.

v  We focus on flexibility, inclusion, collaboration, health and wellbeing both in and outside of work.

v  We provide a wide range of benefits which will reward your hard work, motivate you, and inspire you to work to improve the lives of children every day. You can read more about our benefits here.

 

To learn more about the position, please review the Job Description in the attached Documents.

Please note: This role will involve some working at the Farringdon office in London.

 

Closing date: Sunday 26th November

 

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Please note: To avoid disappointment, you are advised to submit your application as soon as possible as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a high volume of applications are received. This is to ensure that we can manage application levels whilst maintaining a positive candidate experience. Unfortunately, once a vacancy has closed, we are unable to consider further applications.

 

Ways of Working:

We are a Remote First organisation – this means the majority of our roles can be performed remotely, however, you may work from the office as often as you wish. 

Whilst you may be predominantly working from home, we may at times require you to come to your contracted office (up to 2-4 days per month or 6-8 days per quarter).  Note: This will be agreed with your Line Manager and team. This is intended to be time spent on collaborating with colleagues and relationship building. 

 

On-site – There are certain roles that cannot be performed remotely and so your role will be based in an office location and you may occasionally be able to work from home.

 

Flexible Working - We are happy to discuss flexible working options at interview.

 

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion: 

Save the Children UK believes in a world that is fair, inclusive and equitable where all children have the opportunity to change their world. We apply this to our workforce, and we are committed to developing and supporting a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organisation where all employees have a sense of belonging and feel that they can be "Free to Be Me". We are not looking for just one type of person - we want to recruit people who can add fresh perspectives, innovative ideas or challenge that disrupts the risk of group think. 

 

We are especially interested in people whose childhood experiences - of life on a low income, of migration, of being in a racialised community, of the care system, of being LGBT+ or in an LGBT+ family or living with (or with someone with) a disability - help us to see things we might otherwise miss. Whatever your story is we want to hear it because we know that different voices, ideas, perspectives and knowledge, working together will enable us to better the lives of children around the world. This is the reason why we are all here.