Public policy jobs in Cambridge, cambridgeshire

Are you someone who can build trusted relationships across sectors, develop sustainable income, and turn strategic opportunities into meaningful impact? 

Are you looking for a part-time, senior role where you can shape organisational direction, grow partnerships, and deliver programmes with national and international reach? 

The Design in Mental Health Network (DiMHN) is a UK-based charity dedicated to improving mental health outcomes through better design. We are seeking a strategic and entrepreneurial Head of Partnerships & Programmes to play a central role in our next phase of growth. 

In this role, success will mean building high-value partnerships, growing sustainable income, and delivering programmes that expand DiMHN’s impact and influence. 

WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING 

Reporting to the Chief Executive, you will: 

• Drive sustainable income through a mix of commercial partnerships, membership growth, and charitable funding
• Develop and lead strategic and commercial partnerships, from opportunity through to delivery
• Lead the design, delivery, and evaluation of programmes across our core areas of work
• Grow and engage a diverse membership across commercial and health sector stakeholders
• Embed strong monitoring, evaluation, and reporting to demonstrate impact and inform decision-making

WHO WE'RE LOOKING FOR

We are looking for a strategic, relationship-driven leader who can translate opportunity into impact, income, and influence. 

Knowledge and experience 

You will bring: 

• A strong track record of developing and securing income through partnerships, sponsorship, membership, and/or charitable funding
• Experience building and managing commercial or strategic partnerships, including identifying opportunities and maintaining long-term relationships
• Experience designing and delivering programmes involving multiple stakeholders, sectors, and/or geographies
• The ability to develop robust business cases, including assessing opportunities, risks, and resource requirements
• Experience growing and engaging professional networks, memberships, or cross-sector communities
• Confidence working in complex, multi-stakeholder environments

Knowledge of the mental health, healthcare, design, or built environment sectors is welcome, but not essential. 

Personal attributes 

You will be: 

• Strategic and entrepreneurial, able to spot and develop opportunities
• Collaborative and relationship-led, with the ability to build trust across diverse stakeholders
• Impact-focused, motivated by delivering measurable outcomes
• Adaptable and resilient, comfortable working in a growing and evolving organisation 
• Passionate about improving mental health outcomes and interested in how design can improve people’s lives 

WHAT YOU'LL GET IN RETURN

As part of the team, you will benefit from:

• Annual leave - 28 days’ annual leave plus bank holidays (pro rata) 
• Work from home – though in-person meetings with partners and members will be expected in order to build strong working relationships
• Flexible working - flexibility in how the 21 hours are worked across the week (to be agreed during offer discussions) 

NEXT STEPS 

Please see https://bit.ly/DIMHNPartnershipsProgrammes for our Candidate Pack, application instructions and details about the interview process.

Helplines Partnership (HLP) is looking for a creative, digitally skilled communicator to join our small, friendly team. This is a varied and rewarding role at the heart of the UK helpline sector, with real scope to grow our reach, membership and influence.

You will support and deliver HLP's Marketing and Communications Strategy managing social media, building email campaigns, leading on website content, and producing graphics and video. You will co-create sector campaigns including our annual Helpline Awareness Day, develop press releases and media commentary, and report on performance across all digital channels. Strong organisational skills and the ability to manage budgets and lead cross-team projects are essential.

The ideal candidate will have experience in digital communications or marketing, be a confident copywriter across multiple audiences, and be comfortable with CRM software and a website CMS. Familiarity with tools such as Canva, Mailchimp, Google Analytics or Wagtail is desirable, as is knowledge of the charity or membership sector. Above all, we want someone self-motivated, collaborative and passionate about making a difference who shares our values of quality, passion, integrity, ambition and equity.

We are interviewing on a rolling basis, so early applications are encouraged. HLP is an equal opportunities employer.

Our Values: 

Helplines Partnership’s core values have been developed to guide the way we want to work, manage our business, and deliver our services. They provide the foundation for our staff when responding to members and stakeholders. 

Quality – confirming our commitment to value and excellence 

Passion – affirming our enthusiasm for what we do 

Integrity – upholding our commitment to honesty and sound work principles 

Ambition – emphasising our motivation and determination to succeed 

Equity – committing ourselves to fairness and equality 

Helplines Partnership is committed to inspiring its members with the same ethos and building a connected, responsive and sustainable help-sector and is committed to anti-discriminatory values and to the involvement of users of services. 

Other requirements: 

This is a homeworking role. 

Expectation of occasional/regular travel and work effectively within and outside the UK. 

This is a part-time position 22.5 hours per week - Wednesday - Friday.

Senior Service Designer  

 
Location: remote. This role can be based at any of Barnardo's national offices. Regular local and national travel will be required. 
 

Help us design services that transform childhoods  

At Barnardo's, we believe every child deserves a safe, happy and hopeful future. For over 150 years, we've been innovating to improve the lives of children, young people and families across the UK. Today, we run more than 800 services and are committed to making them excellent, inclusive and designed with the children, young people and families who use them. 

As a senior member of the Service Design team, you will play a vital role in applying service design methods to deliver measurable improvements in service quality, efficiency, value and outcomes for children, young people and families. 

We are continuing to strengthen how we design and improve services across Barnardo's, working across a complex and evolving portfolio that spans children's services, digital delivery and business development. 

This role offers the opportunity to shape not only individual services, but how service design is used to support decision-making, prioritisation and innovation across the organisation. 

This is a hands-on role as well as a strategic one – you'll be actively designing, prototyping and iterating services as well as shaping direction and decision-making. 

As a Senior Service Designer, you will: 

• Work across a portfolio of projects, balancing priorities and adapting to changing organisational needs 

• Contribute to service development and proposals, working with business development colleagues to shape service models 

• Influence decision-making and prioritisation, using evidence and insight to guide direction 

• Identify opportunities to improve services in ways that deliver better outcomes, greater efficiency and value for money 

• Lead the end-to-end design of services in complex environments, shaping user-centred, evidence-based solutions that respond to organisational priorities, and creating service maps, blueprints, prototypes and other design artefacts to bring ideas to life 

• Test and iterate service concepts in response to feedback and learning, refining solutions to improve outcomes 

• Ensure services are coherent and integrated across online and offline channels 

• Work across functions including business development, digital, finance, operations, research and policy to engage stakeholders and support organisational change 

• Mentor and support colleagues – developing confidence and skills, with the potential to provide line management support to junior designers where appropriate 

• Develop practice and contribute to standards, frameworks and reusable design patterns 

• Share learning internally and externally, contributing to professional communities of practice and helping raise the profile of service design at Barnardo's 

This is a varied, hands-on and project-focused role that allows for autonomy, creativity and real impact. You'll be part of a warm, committed team that shares learning, supports wellbeing, and is united in a clear mission: designing for better outcomes for children and families. 

You'll work with a high degree of autonomy, navigating complexity and ambiguity, delivering tangible improvements to services and contributing to a growing and evolving design practice. 

What We're Looking For 

We're looking for a Senior Service Designer who can: 

• Work autonomously to lead the design of complex services 

• Manage competing priorities effectively across projects, balancing time, focus and trade-offs 

• Influence stakeholders and support organisational change beyond immediate project teams, communicating design decisions and complex ideas clearly to a range of audiences 

• Understand how services operate within wider organisational systems, and use this to inform decision-making and support effective change 

• Confidently use a range of evidence, including user research, service data and performance insights, to inform decisions and guide direction 

• Conduct in-depth user research to generate actionable insights and guide decision-making 

• Create and iterate prototypes and other design artefacts 

• Integrate offline and online service delivery into coherent end-to-end services 

• Design and facilitate collaborative workshops with a range of stakeholders and partners 

• Evaluate and evidence the impact of service design work

Previous experience in children's services, health, education or related public/third sector contexts is desirable – but if you bring transferable skills, we want to hear from you. 

What You'll Get in Return 

• 26 days annual leave (rising with service) plus bank holidays 

• Access to the Barnardo's pension scheme 

• Flexible working and hybrid/remote options 

• Wellbeing initiatives and Employee Assistance Programme 

• Regular supervision and career development opportunities 

• The opportunity to shape how service design is used across a national organisation 

• The chance to work on services that support children, young people and families across the UK.

Inclusion and Belonging 

We are committed to building a diverse workforce. We particularly welcome applications from disabled candidates, LGBTQ+ people, people from racially minoritised communities, and those with care experience. If there's anything we can do to support you through the application process, please let us know. 

 Ready to Apply?

Together, we can change childhoods and change lives.

When completing your application please refer to your skills knowledge and experience in relation to the Person Specification and Job Description.

Please note due to the high volume of applications for some posts, this advert might close before the displayed closing date.  We recommend that you apply for this role as soon as possible.

Release Counselling and Therapy for Women is entering an exciting new chapter. 

Founded in Brighton and Hove in 2013, Release has grown from a small local charity into a financially robust organisation with a growing national reach. Under the leadership of our outgoing CEO, the charity has been transformed—moving from a challenging financial position to one with strong reserves, clear sustainability, and ambitious plans for growth. 

We now provide affordable 1:1 online counselling to women across the UK, alongside specialist group programmes supporting maternal mental health and key life transitions. One-to-one counselling is a core offer and a vital income stream, enabling us to extend our reach while staying true to our values. 

This period has also seen Release grow to working with over 20 dedicated volunteer counsellors, strengthening our capacity and community impact. 

As our CEO steps down, Release is ready for its next phase—building on strong foundations, amplifying our national impact, and remaining firmly rooted in our purpose: being a charity that supports women’s mental health, run by women, for women.

Lloyds Bank Foundation 

Funding and Compliance Lead 

Starting Salary: £55,479 (outside London); £58,983 (London-based). Plus 3.6% increase following successful completion of probation period. 

Contract: Full-time, permanent contract (we are open to conversations about flexibility – so please ask) 

Location: Remote role – can be based anywhere in England and Wales, with an expectation of some travel to the London office 

About Lloyds Bank Foundation 

Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales is an independent charitable foundation, backed by Lloyds Banking Group and the people within it. We want everyone to be in a good place – personally, in a home that’s a good place to live, and in a community that’s a good place to belong. 

We play our role by connecting and catalysing community-led change, providing the money, time, tools and connections that build organisations’ capacity and capability, to make people’s lives better and their communities stronger. 

We back people and communities across England and Wales to make that happen, because when you back brilliant people, brilliant things happen. 

About the Role 

This is a key leadership role responsible for ensuring the Foundation delivers high-quality, transparent and equitable funding practices across its work. 

As Funding and Compliance Lead, you will lead the end-to-end funding and compliance function, bringing together assessment, contract management, risk and grant management to ensure decisions are robust, proportionate and aligned with regulatory and sector standards. 

You will play a critical role in strengthening systems and ways of working, improving consistency, quality and the experience of applicants and funded partners. Working closely across the organisation, you will ensure that funding and compliance activity is aligned with our strategy and supports effective delivery of community-led change. 

You will also lead and develop a high-performing team, fostering a culture of accountability, collaboration and continuous improvement. 

About You 

We’re looking for an experienced and collaborative leader with strong expertise in grant management, compliance and risk. You will bring a track record of delivering high-quality funding processes, alongside experience of improving systems and ways of working. 

You will be confident navigating complexity, balancing rigour with pragmatism, and ensuring that processes are both robust and accessible. Strong analytical skills, attention to detail and the ability to use data and insight to inform decisions are essential. 

You will also be an effective people manager, able to support and develop others while creating a positive and inclusive team culture. A strong commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion and the Foundation’s values is key. 

How to Apply 

Please click ‘Apply’ to be redirected to our website, where you can download the Candidate Information Pack and find details of how to apply. 

For an informal conversation about the role and application process, please contact our recruitment partner, Atkinson HR via the contact information provided in the candidate pack.

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion 

We hold Disability Confident Employer status (Level 2) and are working towards full status by 2027. This means that if you're a disabled applicant and your CV and application answers clearly demonstrate that you meet the essential criteria for the role, we will invite you to interview. 

More broadly, we are committed to building a diverse team that reflects the communities and people we work with. We believe that diversity of background, experience and perspective makes us stronger and helps us make better decisions. We actively welcome applications from people who are under-represented in the charity sector, including people from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities, disabled people, and those with experience of the issues our funded charities work to address. 

Key Dates 

Closing Date: Midday, Monday 15th June 

First Interview: Thursday 25th June 2026 

Second Interview: Monday 6th July 2026