Life skills coach jobs

WORKING WITH US

The founder and sponsor of the Harris Federation, Lord Harris of Peckham, opened our first school in 1990. We have, over the past thirty years, implemented ideas and initiatives that have transformed the opportunities of pupils from working class and disadvantaged backgrounds. Harris academies are widely recognised as a force for social mobility. We are immensely proud of the role that our alumni are now beginning to play in the world and of what we believe our current generation of pupils will go on to achieve.

We now have over 50 schools educating more than 40,000 young people across London and Essex, and employ over 5,000 staff across our academies and head office. With the majority of our academies located in areas of high socioeconomic disadvantage, a high-quality education is key to the futures of the pupils we serve.

As a provider of employment and education, we value the diversity of our staff and students, and all our staff are equally valued and respected. We are committed to providing a fair, equitable and mutually supportive learning and working environment for our students and staff.

Our work will impact many generations to come, and our staff come from all backgrounds and walks of life, coming together to inspire young minds. We promote an inclusive culture that embraces the valuable and enriching contribution that all of our community make. We continue to be proactive in uplifting and supporting all voices at Harris.

To discover more about our culture, ethos and what it is like to work here, visit the page.

ABOUT THIS OPPORTUNITY

We are looking for a dynamic, enthusiastic and forward-thinking Capital Project Manager to oversee the management and development of the school estate.

Reporting to the Head of Estates and Projects and working with the estates team, you will be responsible for delivering the capital developments across the estate, including a focus on new schools, sustainability projects and efficiency standards.

MAIN AREAS OF RESPONSIBILITY

Your responsibilities will include:

• Managing SCA project priorities, budgets and delivery from inception to end of defects
• Managing the opening and delivery of new free schools with the DfE, design teams and local authorities
• Managing and supporting estate condition, maintenance and asset management
• Managing capital elements of academy conversion projects
• Planning, procuring and delivering high-quality estate and project services
• Managing and monitoring external technical advisors
• Managing health & safety across all project lifecycles
• Managing third-party suppliers and consultants
• Managing consultations, admissions, branding, marketing, FF&E and uniforms for new schools
• Providing professional property services and ensuring compliance with legislation and regulations
• Assisting with estate-related policies, procedures and statutory frameworks
• Contributing to capital fund prioritisation and overseeing capital projects
• Assisting in developing a carbon reduction strategy
• Managing and supporting key building programmes and reporting to senior leaders
• Contributing to monthly project performance reports

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

We would like to hear from you if you have:

• A relevant undergraduate degree or equivalent experience in a project management environment
• Evidence of continued professional development
• Project management experience within education, not-for-profit or public sector 
• Experience of coordinating projects in complex and challenging environments
• Demonstrable successful delivery of project outputs to required time, quality and cost
• The ability to interpret and present complex information to inform robust recommendations for evidence-based practice and decision-making
• Proven and well-developed interpersonal skills, including excellent written and spoken communication
• Good administrative, finance and organisational skills
• Good working knowledge of Microsoft Office 365 applications, including strong Excel skills
• The ability to work independently and flexibly with your own initiative on various ongoing projects
• A professional working ethic and a commitment to high standards
• The ability to ensure that confidentiality is always maintained
• The ability to upskill oneself with new areas of expertise

For a full job description and person specification, please download the Job Pack.

APPLYING FOR THIS POSITION

If you would like to discuss the opportunity further, or if you have any questions, please contact us via email to arrange a conversation.

Before applying please ensure you download the job pack from our careers website, this will help with completing your application. Please note that we only accept applications submitted online before the closing date.

When applying, you will have the option to import your CV or use a LinkedIn profile which will auto populate the online application.

A reminder to check your junk mail for our email communications and add us to your safe senders list to ensure all future email communication is received.

OUR VISION & VALUES

Our vision, from the start, has been to provide the structure and services needed for our schools to amount to more than the sum of their parts, and to free-up our teachers and leaders to focus on one thing and one thing only: the outstanding education of all their pupils. Our young people and communities are at the heart of everything we do. Our core mission has always been to close the educational gap between young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers. Our ambition is one where every child in London, no matter their background, has equal access to high quality education, giving them the same opportunities and potential to succeed.

We know there are many challenges facing our young people and the communities we serve, and that’s why we need determined people like you to help us tackle those inequalities. Whilst each of our academies has their own unique cultures and values; as a whole Federation, we have four core values which are central to successfully achieving our vision: Excellence, Collaboration, Support, and Innovation. We are proud of our values because they guide us in how we work allowing us to achieve the best possible outcomes for our young people, communities, and colleagues.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Safeguarding Notice

The Harris Federation and all our academies are committed to ensuring the highest levels of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people, and we expect all our staff and volunteers to share this commitment. All offers of employment are subject to an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check, references, an online search, and where applicable, a prohibition from teaching check will be completed.

Equal Opportunities

The Harris Federation is an equal opportunities employer and welcomes applications from all suitably qualified candidates. We value the diversity of our staff and students, and everyone at the Harris Federation is equally valued and respected. We aim to be an inclusive employer that reflects the communities we serve. We are committed to providing a fair, equitable and mutually supportive learning and working environment.

WHAT WE CAN OFFER YOU

Harris has a strong culture of collaboration and best practice, with professional development and career planning at its centre. We invest in our staff with support, coaching, mentoring, and a wide range of top-quality training programmes delivered at every level.

You will also have access to a variety of benefits, support programmes and initiatives including:

• Excellent opportunities for continuous professional development and career progression
• Annual performance and loyalty bonus
• Pension scheme (Teachers' Pension Scheme or Local Government Pension Scheme) with generous employer contribution
• 26 days' annual leave (inclusive of our Christmas Eve closure day) plus bank holidays, rising to 27 days after 2 years' service, or equivalent for staff on term time contracts
• Harris Wellbeing Cash Plan including cover for routine and specialist healthcare
• Employee Assistance Programme for free and confidential advice
• Cycle to work salary sacrifice scheme
• Wide range of shopping, leisure, and travel discounts
• 20% off at Tapi Carpets, exclusive to Harris employees
• Interest-free ICT and season ticket loans

For most non-teaching staff based at our Head Office in East Croydon, we also offer lifestyle friendly working arrangements including flexible start and end times, and hybrid working with two days from home and three days on site.

The Director of Charitable Impact is a senior leadership role responsible for defining, driving, delivering (operating), and evidencing Ben’s charitable impact. The postholder will lead the strategic and operational delivery of health, wellbeing, and support and specialist services, ensuring the charity demonstrably improves lives while strengthening its position as a credible, trusted health and wellbeing charity and thought leader for the automotive community.

Job Title: Director of Charitable Impact
Organisation: Ben – Motor & Allied Trades Benevolent Fund (The Automotive Industry Charity)
Location: Home Based, UK (with regular travel)
Salary: c. £80,000 – £90,000 per annum + £5,000 car allowance
Reports to: Chief Executive Officer
Direct Reports: Support Services Lead and Specialist Services Lead

This role combines strategic leadership, operational performance, service innovation, impact measurement, and external influence to ensure Ben delivers meaningful, measurable, and visible outcomes for those who need it most.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership & Impact

• Lead the development and delivery of Ben’s Charitable Impact Strategy aligned to organisational vision and priorities.
• Ensure the charity delivers clear, measurable, and demonstrable outcomes for individuals, families, and the wider automotive workforce.
• Embed an outcomes-driven culture focused on evidence, learning, and continuous improvement.
• Translate strategy into operational delivery plans, KPIs, and impact frameworks.

Service Delivery & Operations

• Oversee the effective delivery of all charitable programmes and services, ensuring they are high quality, accessible, safe, and impactful.
• Drive service innovation to meet emerging health, financial, and social wellbeing needs across the automotive sector.
• Ensure services are delivered efficiently, sustainably, and in line with regulatory, safeguarding, and quality / clinical governance standards.
• Use insight and data to inform service design, resource allocation, and performance improvement.

Health & Wellbeing Leadership

• Lead Ben’s evolution into a recognised, credible health and wellbeing charity for the automotive industry.
• Ensure services reflect best practice in mental health, physical wellbeing, financial resilience, and social support.
• Build partnerships with health, wellbeing, and sector specialists to strengthen service quality and credibility.
• Champion prevention, early intervention, and whole-person health and wellbeing approaches.

Impact Measurement & Evidence

• Develop and embed robust impact measurement, evaluation, and reporting frameworks.
• Ensure the charity can clearly demonstrate social value, outcomes, and return on investment to stakeholders.
• Lead production of impactful insight, data, and evidence to inform decision-making and external positioning.
• Strengthen the charity’s ability to use evidence to attract funding, partnerships, and sector influence.

Thought Leadership & External Influence

• Position Ben as a leading voice on health and wellbeing in the automotive industry.
• Develop insight, campaigns, and sector engagement that raise awareness of issues affecting automotive people.
• Represent Ben externally with credibility and authority across industry, health, and charity sectors.
• Contribute to policy, research, and sector dialogue to influence positive change.

Leadership & Culture

• Provide inspiring leadership to multidisciplinary teams, fostering a high-performance, values-driven culture.
• Build organisational capability in impact, service delivery, and wellbeing.
• Promote collaboration across the organisation, particularly with fundraising, engagement, and communications.
• Lead through change, ensuring services evolve with need and strategy.

Governance & Risk

• Contribute to Executive Team leadership, organisational strategy, and governance.
• Ensure services operate within legal, regulatory, and safeguarding frameworks.
• Manage operational and reputational risk relating to service delivery and impact.

Person Specification

Experience

• Significant senior leadership experience within the charity, health, social impact, or related sector.
• Proven track record of delivering measurable social impact and leading outcome-driven services or programmes.
• Experience of overseeing complex service delivery / operational functions.
• Demonstrable success in leading organisational or service transformation.
• Experience developing impact measurement, evaluation, or evidence frameworks.
• Experience influencing external stakeholders and building credibility within a sector or field.
• Experience leading and developing high-performing, multidisciplinary teams.

Knowledge & Understanding

• Strong understanding of physical and mental health and wellbeing, psychology and emotional wellbeing, prevention, and whole-person support.
• Knowledge of impact measurement, social value, and outcome frameworks.
• Understanding of safeguarding, quality, and regulatory considerations in service delivery (e.g. clinical governance requirements).
• Insight into the challenges affecting working people and communities (financial, health, social).
• Understanding of the charity sector, charity governance, and funding environment (desirable).
• Awareness of the automotive industry or willingness to quickly develop industry insight.

Skills & Capabilities

• Strategic thinker with strong delivery focus — able to translate vision into measurable outcomes.
• Operationally strong with ability to drive performance, quality, and improvement.
• Evidence-driven and analytical, able to use insight and data to shape decisions.
• Credible and influential communicator, internally and externally.
• Strong leadership presence with ability to inspire, engage, and lead through change.
• Collaborative and partnership-oriented.
• Strong judgement, integrity, and commitment to safeguarding and ethical practice.

Personal Qualities

• Passion for improving lives and delivering meaningful social impact.
• Purpose-driven, values-led, and mission aligned.
• Resilient, adaptable, and outcome focused.
• Curious, forward-thinking, and committed to learning and innovation.
• Empathetic and people-centred in approach.

Key Relationships

• Chief Executive and Executive Team
• Service Delivery and Impact teams
• Fundraising, Marketing & Communications teams
• Trustees and Board Committees
• External partners / organisations including automotive stakeholder or employers, health and wellbeing, welfare and charity, etc.

Success Measures

• Clear, demonstrable improvement in measurable charitable impact.
• Strong, high-quality, accessible health and wellbeing services.
• Recognised credibility as a health and wellbeing charity for the automotive industry.
• Robust impact evidence used to inform strategy, funding, and influence.
• Positive service outcomes, reach, and stakeholder confidence.

Portfolio Manager, Funding Department

12 Month Fixed Term Contract

£45,905 - £48,848 pa

City of London E1 8QS and we are a hybrid working organisation

Please note this is a hybrid role based on the successful candidate working at least two days a week in our London office. Remote contracts would not be considered for this role.

Purpose of Role

The Portfolio Manager plays a key role in the success of Comic Relief’s team responsible for grants that address the effects of poverty. This role is focused on food insecurity in the UK.

The Portfolio Manager will hold direct responsibility for new Comic Relief grant making and ongoing grant management in the UK, ensuring excellent grant making practice.

The Portfolio Manager will collaborate with other teams in the funding department and across the wider organisation to support Comic Relief’s overall objectives, including income generation.

This role sits in a team that also focuses on areas such as homelessness, early childhood development, maternal and child health, and forced migration.

Key responsibilities:

Grant making and ongoing grant management

· Manage new grant making, including working with colleagues to design funding opportunities, assessing funded partners, designing appropriate ongoing support mechanisms, and working with learning colleagues in the Funding Team on appropriate data collection

· Manage assigned funding portfolios and relationships with funded partners, ensuring that the portfolio is managed in a timely and responsive way, using Comic Relief’s (CR’s) systems and processes.

· Coordinate with other colleagues across the different teams in the funding department to ensure effective and efficient ways of working, and fruitful collaboration and learning across different funded issues and areas.

· Manage all ongoing requirements, such as narrative, financial and risk reporting, collaborating across the funding team and wider Comic Relief as appropriate.

· Work with the Assurance and Finance teams to ensure ongoing compliance across the portfolio with legal requirements, our grant conditions, reporting requirements and best practice.

· Collaborate with Partnerships colleagues to manage donor reporting and other information needs for external and internal use, such as information about our funded work and our partners.

Cross organisation and sector collaboration

· Support resource mobilisation partnerships through collaborative and supportive working with Comic Relief’s communications, fundraising and partnership teams.

· Work with the Partnerships Team to support strong relationships with existing and potential co-funding partners, including corporates and/or trusts, foundations and institutions, and support proposal development, reporting and other requirements.

· Work collaboratively across CR to support storytelling around CR’s impact.

· Develop a good understanding of areas of social change within assigned funding portfolios and areas of new grant making to be able to represent Comic Relief’s funding and priorities to internal and external stakeholders

· Contribute to internal communications regarding the work of the team and the wider Funding Team.

· Represent Comic Relief to strategic partners and co-funders, in relevant networks, and at external events.

General

· Manage the work of consultants and other contractors as required.

· Communicate in an open, honest and transparent way with funding applicants, funded partners and funding partners.

· Ensure that, when applicable, people with lived or learned experience are actively engaged with our work, contributing to the design and decision-making process of our funding portfolios.

Note: Some UK and/or international travel may be required for this role.

Person specification

Essential criteria

· Significant understanding/experience of the systems and structures that perpetuate social injustice and keep people trapped in poverty, including the best approaches to address them

· Experience and knowledge of grant making and programme design, including developing, implementing and evaluating programmes, and managing grants within a donor and / or implementing organisation.

· Experience of managing restricted donor funding and supporting ongoing donor management (e.g. government funding and/or funding from other institutions, trusts foundations or corporate entities)

· Personal and effective relationship builder with high emotional intelligence to nurture trust and respect in all relationships.

· Motivation, flexibility and resilience to navigate unforeseen challenges and collaborate effectively.

· Analytical thinker with the ability to see the bigger picture and make appropriate and effective decisions.

· An understanding or lived experience of social injustice, and proven track record of working in alignment with Comic Relief’s commitment to social justice, anti-racism, diversity, inclusion and equity

Desirable criteria 

· Experience with or knowledge of decolonising philanthropy and the wider funding sector

· Understanding of, and commitment to, the use of storytelling to engage the public in programmatic work

· Experience of budget management

Perks and benefits:

· Flexible working hours

· Work from home option

· Life Insurance

· Wellness programs

· Employee Assistance Programme

· Enhanced maternity and paternity leave

· Paid emergency leave

· Sabbatical Opportunities

· Professional development

· Mentoring/coaching

· Paid volunteer days

· Payroll giving

· Salary sacrifice

· Team social events

· Extracurricular clubs

· Cycle to work scheme

· Free fruit

To apply please visit our website via the link and apply online.

Comic Relief reserves the right to close the role early if a large number of applications are received.

Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women and people of colour are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At Comic Relief we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyways. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

Why work at Comic Relief

There are lots of good reasons to join us at Comic Relief. You can read more about our employee benefits, such as our commitment to flexible and hybrid working. We ask staff to come to the office twice a week, normally on agreed team days, so that we can do all those things that are difficult to do online. Our office is based in Whitechapel, London,

There are lots of opportunities to develop your skills and experience at Comic Relief, including opportunities to become a Mental Health First Aider or to participate in our Employee Network Groups that focus on making Comic Relief a more inclusive place to work.

Disability Confident Employer

As part of the Disability Confident scheme, we take positive action by providing first-round interviews to candidates who have a registered disability, provided they meet the minimum criteria for the role, as demonstrated on their CV and application questions.

We ask that candidates that wish to be considered for this scheme email us via our website to discuss further. Please do not email CV's/cover letters.