5 Play worker jobs in Milton Keynes

At One YMCA, we work alongside young people to help them develop confidence, skills, resilience, and positive futures. We are looking for an inspiring, experienced and motivated Youth Work Manager to lead and develop our local youth work provision, ensuring that high-quality, impactful services reach young people across our communities.

This is an exciting opportunity to play a key role in delivering our Youth Work Strategy, managing a dedicated team, driving quality and developing services that make a real difference in the lives of young people.

About the role:

Reporting to the Head of Youth Work, you will take operational responsibility for the delivery, development, monitoring, and quality assurance of our youth work services. You will lead and support Youth Work Coordinators and wider youth work staff, ensuring services are safe, effective, youth-centred, and aligned with One YMCA's strategic priorities.

Key responsibilities include:

• Leading the development and delivery of youth work programmes, specialist support services, mentoring initiatives, life skills courses, and large-scale youth events.
• Managing and supporting staff through recruitment, induction, supervision, training, and performance development.
• Monitoring contract performance, outcomes, impact data, and key performance indicators to demonstrate the difference our services make.
• Building strong relationships with schools, local authorities, partner agencies, and community stakeholders.
• Leading quality assurance, compliance, safeguarding, and continuous improvement across the service.
• Acting as Designated Safeguarding Lead and participating in the safeguarding on-call rota.
• Working with young people and teams to ensure youth voice is at the heart of everything we do.

We're looking for someone who combines strong operational leadership, experience in managing contractual compliance, with a genuine commitment to young people.

You will bring:

• Significant experience delivering and managing youth work programmes, projects, or contracts.
• A strong understanding of issues affecting young people's lives and a passion for helping them achieve positive outcomes.
• Experience leading, motivating, and developing staff teams.
• Excellent communication, relationship-building, and partnership-working skills.
• The ability to analyse data, monitor impact, and use insight to improve services.
• A youth work or related community-focused qualification at degree level, or significant equivalent experience.
• A full UK driving licence and access to a vehicle for work purposes.

Location: Home-based role but with regular travel to YMCA youth work delivery sites across Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, as well as to support the broader youth work within One YMCA. 

Driving licence and access to a car is essential for this role.

If you are an experienced youth work leader ready for your next challenge, we would love to hear from you! 

Important: Please include a supporting statement with your application/CV.

We do not provide visa sponsorship; you must be eligible to work in the UK. You must reside in the UK for the duration of your employment and provide Right to Work evidence.

As some of our roles involve working with vulnerable members of society, this position may require a Basic or Enhanced Criminal Disclosure, which will be conducted once a conditional offer is made

Previous Applications: We welcome applications from all qualified candidates. However, if you have applied for a similar role within the last 6 months and were not successful, please consider whether your experience has developed further before reapplying

Accessibility & Adjustments: We are committed to making reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process and will strive to be as accommodating as possible. Please inform us in advance of any arrangements you may need to fully participate in the process.

At One YMCA we are an inclusive organisation and actively promote equality of opportunity for all with the right mix of talent, skills, and potential. We do not discriminate on the basis of Age, Disability, Gender Reassignment, Marriage/Civil Partnership, Pregnancy/Maternity, Race, Religion/Belief, Sex and/or Sexual Orientation. We encourage applications from all backgrounds, communities, and industries, and are committed to having a team that is made up of diverse skills, experiences, and abilities.

Working hours: 37.5 hours per week, generally Monday to Friday but with flexibility of working pattern to support both the ideal candidate and business need. Some evening work expected, and occasional weekend, overnight stays or residential work.

Citizens Advice Milton Keynes is a local charity that helps people to resolve their legal, money and personal problems. We have been providing free, confidential, and impartial advice since 1972 and helped over 8000 local people last year.

We are looking for an enthusiastic, reliable and confident person to join us in delivering a new project based in local GP Surgeries. The ideal candidate will provide a Social Prescribing Link Worker service, to patients of Ascent Primary Care Network (Ascent PCN) in Milton Keynes, working to support patients and staff at each of their 3 medical centres across the area.

The Link Worker will take referrals from the PCN’s practices, and from a wide range of external agencies, and through self-referrals. They’ll work with people to identify issues that affect their health and wellbeing and co-produce a simple personalised care and support plan that connects them to non-medical community-based activities, groups and services that meet practical, social, and emotional needs.

This is a challenging role, managing a demanding caseload, working to strict quality standards and playing a full part in multi-disciplinary team of health and social care professionals. Successful candidates will be able to ensure that all work is compliant with our contract funder – Ascent PCN, and Citizens Advice standards.

Applicants need to be:

• Computer-literate, although training on our case recording systems will be given.
• Able to travel between each of the 3 surgeries in Milton Keynes.
• Confident in working to performance targets.
• Able to show good communications skills, both written and verbal. These are essential in the role, as are excellent customer service skills with a non-judgemental approach.
• Prepared to work independently and from a variety of community-based locations.

A minimum of 12 months’ experience in a social prescribing role or an agency providing advice, support and signposting (or similar setting) is desirable.

The successful Applicant/s will be asked to undergo an Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check.

Closing date: Sunday 20th September 2026

We are looking for experienced social workers to help take the Weekenders programme into its next chapter. You will join a small, ambitious charity and play a central role in growing a relational, child-focused programme across England.

THE OPPORTUNITY 

• Salary: starting from £40,000, subject to experience

• Hours: full time, 37.5 hours per week

• Location: home-based within England, with regular team co-working and travel

• Contracts: one permanent post and two 18-month fixed-term posts

• Flexibility: occasional evening or weekend delivery, usually around once per month

• Travel: across England, including occasional overnight stays; reasonable expenses are covered

ABOUT NOW FOSTER

Now Foster brings together social work, service design, lived experience and innovation to transform fostering in England. Our vision is to bring many more wonderful people into fostering so that more children and young people can experience stable, meaningful relationships with caring adults.

We are a small team with big ambitions. We value creativity, collaboration, learning and continuous improvement, and we work with partners who share our determination to do better for children and families.

ABOUT WEEKENDERS 

Weekenders is our flagship programme. We recruit and support weekend foster carers – known as Weekenders – who build regular, long-term relationships with children and young people supported by local authorities. It is about showing up, making a difference and becoming an adult a young person can count on.

The programme is entering an exciting period of growth. We are expanding our partnerships with Regional Care Cooperatives, Fostering Hubs and local authorities across England, currently including London, the South West, North West and North East.

THE ROLE – Lead delivery, develop people and stay close to practice

As a Weekenders Programme Manager, you will turn our ambition into consistently excellent delivery. You will lead the day-to-day support of applicants across an agreed portfolio of areas, making sure prospective Weekenders receive a warm, responsive and motivational experience and that our partners can rely on us to deliver what we have agreed.

This is a people-management and delivery role with a strong connection to practice. You will line-manage Journey Guides, manage a network of independent social workers (ISWs), lead our prep group training and undertake some intro chats yourself.

The role does not carry a statutory caseload. It does carry real responsibility for safeguarding, practice quality, operational oversight and relationships across a growing, geographically distributed programme.

Delivery Leadership: Lead programme delivery

• Take day-to-day responsibility for Weekenders delivery across an agreed portfolio of Fostering Hubs and local authority partners.

• Turn partnership agreements and local processes into clear applicant journeys, with roles, handovers and timescales understood by everyone involved.

• Plan capacity across Journey Guides, ISWs, prep group training and your own direct work so that delivery keeps pace with demand.

• Monitor applicant progress, identify delays or risks early and work with colleagues and partners to find practical solutions.

• Maintain a consistent Now Foster experience across regions while adapting thoughtfully to local contexts.

People Management: Manage and develop Journey Guides

• Provide reflective one-to-one and group supervision, clear objectives and timely feedback.

• Allocate work fairly, monitor workloads and create the structure needed for responsive applicant support.

• Coach Journey Guides in relationship-based, strengths-based and motivational conversations, using observation, role play and practice review where helpful.

• Support sound judgement, safe practice and professional boundaries, addressing performance or wellbeing concerns early and constructively.

• Build a connected team culture in which people share learning, ask for help and take ownership.

Practice Oversight: Manage ISWs and assure practice quality

• Build and maintain a reliable pool of qualified, registered ISWs to undertake initial home visits and teach on prep group training days.

• Coordinate ISW recruitment, onboarding, availability, allocation and briefing in line with our safer recruitment and practice arrangements.

• Set clear expectations for the quality, timeliness and tone of home visits, written outputs, training and feedback.

• Review quality, provide constructive feedback and address concerns promptly, while forecasting capacity and arranging cover.

Training: Plan, staff and lead prep group training

• Own the planning and delivery of prep group training across programme areas, including schedules, venues or online delivery, materials, communications and staffing.

• Facilitate and teach on prep groups, modelling inclusive, relational and reflective practice.

• Brief and support ISW co-facilitators so sessions are coherent, well-paced and grounded in the realities of fostering.

• Make sure applicants can reflect meaningfully on children's needs, safer caring, trauma-informed care, cultural matching and working with fostering services.

• Ensure observations and training feedback are recorded sensitively and on time, and use feedback to strengthen future delivery.

Relationships: Stay close to applicants and partners

• Undertake some intro chats, particularly where additional experience, judgement or continuity is needed.

• Step into complex applicant situations or difficult conversations without taking over work appropriately held by Journey Guides.

• Develop trusted operational relationships with Fostering Hubs, Regional Care Cooperatives, local authority fostering teams and other partners.

• Work through differences or blockages constructively, combining persistence with curiosity about other people's pressures and perspectives.

Programme Addurance: Safeguarding, quality and improvement

• Promote a strong safeguarding culture and ensure concerns are recognised, recorded and escalated appropriately.

• Maintain accurate, timely records and use pipeline data, feedback and practice observations to understand performance and improve delivery.

• Contribute to the development of tools, guidance, communications and digital workflows as Weekenders grows.

WHO WE'RE LOOKING FOR – Experience, judgement and a strongly relational approach

Essential

You will need a recognised social work qualification and current registration with Social Work England. Beyond that, we are looking for someone who can combine strong practice judgement with people leadership and operational oversight.

You will thrive in this role if you have

• People-management experience – line-managing, supervising or developing staff, including giving feedback and supporting performance and wellbeing.

• Operational leadership – experience leading a service, programme or complex workflow with multiple people, deadlines and handovers.

• Children's services experience – in fostering, children's social care or a closely related setting, with a sound understanding of safeguarding and professional accountability.

• Training confidence – experience planning and delivering engaging adult learning, workshops or group training.

• Partnership skills – experience building productive relationships across organisational boundaries and working through operational challenges.

• A relational approach – able to hold warm, purposeful and appropriately challenging conversations with people from a wide range of backgrounds.

• Strong organisation and judgement – able to prioritise, delegate, manage dependencies and recognise what needs closer oversight or escalation.

• Digital and data confidence – comfortable using CRM and workflow systems, interpreting delivery information and turning insight into action.

The way you work matters

• Children first – you keep children's needs, relationships and long-term outcomes at the centre of decisions.

• Warm and reflective – you build genuine relationships, remain curious about your own impact and welcome feedback.

• Courageous and accountable – you name concerns, make decisions, follow through and own mistakes.

• Collaborative – you share learning generously while maintaining clear accountability.

• Adaptable – you are comfortable in a small, ambitious organisation where roles and systems continue to evolve.

Bonus points for

• Lived experience of the care system.

• Training or experience in motivational interviewing, systemic practice, coaching or another relational approach.

• Experience of foster carer recruitment, initial visits, assessment, prep groups, panel or post-approval support.

• Experience commissioning, coordinating or quality-assuring ISWs, associates or other independent practitioners.

• A practice educator, adult-teaching or training qualification, or substantial equivalent experience.

• Experience scaling a service across regions or working with a dispersed team and multiple delivery partners.

• Project, budget, contract, risk or resource-management experience.

• Experience of co-production, service design or continuous improvement.

WHAT IS IN IT FOR YOU

Joining Now Foster means being part of something different. We are small, ambitious and innovative, and you will have genuine influence over how Weekenders grows. You will stay close to practice and impact without carrying a statutory caseload.

You will join a supportive, collaborative team that cares about doing excellent work in a sustainable and humane way. We work a 37.5-hour week and trust people to manage their time with balance. The programme sometimes requires evening work, weekend training days or travel, and we flex working time around those commitments.

• Salary from £40,000.

• 28 days of annual leave plus bank holidays.

• Home-based working with regular co-working and team days.

• Travel and reasonable work expenses covered in line with Now Foster policy.

• The tools and technology you need to work effectively.

• Workplace pension scheme

• The opportunity to help build a bold, lasting and more relational approach to fostering.
   

We know strong candidates do not always meet every desirable criterion. If the purpose of the role excites you and your experience gives you a strong foundation for the essentials, we encourage you to apply.

RECRUITMENT PROCESS – Key dates and how to apply

• Applications close – Sunday 20 September 2026 at 23:30
• First-round interviews – Online planned for Monday 28 and Tuesday 29 September 2026
• Role play – For candidates progressing to the second round, before the second interview. 30 mins, completed online with one of our Weekenders.
• Second-round interviews– In person planned for Tuesday 6 and Wednesday 7 October 2026 (reasonable travel expenses covered)

Early application is encouraged. We may close the advert before 20 September if we receive a sufficient number of strong applications.

HOW TO APPLY

Please apply through the Charity Jobs listing by the closing date. Candidates invited to interview will receive further information about the format and preparation in advance.

You must have the right to work in the UK. Appointment is subject to current registration with Social Work England, a satisfactory Enhanced DBS check and our other safer recruitment requirements.

We recognise that candidates may use generative AI tools to support their application. This is acceptable, but your application must remain an authentic reflection of your own experience and motivation. Please tell us if and how you used AI as part of preparing it.

As a small charity unfortunately we do not have capacity to respond to unsuccessful candidates or offer feedback at the application stage. Please assume you have been unsuccessful on this occasion if you do not hear from us before the interview dates.

OUR COMMITMENT TO EQUALITY 

Now Foster is committed to being an equal opportunities employer. We celebrate diversity and actively encourage applications from people of all backgrounds, identities and experiences. Recruitment decisions are made using fair, objective and transparent criteria, and we will make reasonable adjustments so the process is accessible.

If you want to help grow a pioneering programme, develop a thoughtful team and create more lasting relationships for children and young people, we would love to hear from you.

The Organisation

We are working with a well-established UK not-for-profit organisation with annual income of approximately £150 million. Operating at significant scale and complexity, the organisation manages a diverse range of income streams including donations, legacies, grant and contract funding, trading activity and investment income. The finance function plays a key role in supporting strong governance, compliance and decision-making across the organisation.

The Job

This is an excellent opportunity for an experienced tax professional to take ownership of all tax matters within a large and complex organisation. Working closely with senior finance colleagues and external advisers, you will act as the organisation's lead technical expert on VAT, Corporation Tax and Gift Aid, ensuring robust compliance, governance and risk management. You will provide practical advice to senior stakeholders, helping the organisation understand and navigate the tax implications of operational and strategic decisions.
Key responsibilities include:

• Leading on VAT, Corporation Tax and Gift Aid compliance and advisory matters
• Preparing and reviewing VAT returns, including partial exemption calculations and annual adjustments
• Managing Corporation Tax compliance and reporting
• Developing and maintaining tax governance frameworks, controls and processes
• Identifying and mitigating tax risks across the organisation
• Providing technical guidance to finance and non-finance stakeholders
• Building effective relationships with external advisers, auditors and internal teams
• Driving continuous improvement across tax processes, controls and reporting systems

Location: Remote working, with occasional office attendance in London (typically once per quarter)

Hours: 28 hours per week (may consider full-time hours for the right person)

Salary: £60,000 - £70,000 per annum, pro rata (28 hours)

The Person

We are seeking a qualified accountant or tax professional with strong technical expertise and experience operating within a large, complex organisation.

You will be able to demonstrate:

• CCAB qualification or equivalent relevant professional qualification
• Strong knowledge of UK VAT, Corporation Tax and Gift Aid legislation
• Experience managing complex VAT environments, including partial exemption
• A track record of delivering accurate and timely tax compliance activities
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills
• The ability to translate technical tax matters into practical business guidance
• Experience working collaboratively across finance, systems, planning and operational teams
• A proactive approach to continuous improvement and risk management

Experience gained within the charity, not-for-profit, membership body or broader complex organisation environment would be advantageous.

What's in It for You?

• Remote working arrangement
• Double-matched pension contributions up to 8%
• 27 days' annual leave plus bank holidays, pro rata
• The opportunity to be the lead tax specialist within a sizeable, nationally recognised organisation
• Exposure to a broad range of complex tax matters and senior stakeholders
• A supportive and collaborative finance team environment

How to Apply

If you are an experienced tax professional looking for a flexible role where you can make a significant impact, we'd be delighted to hear from you.

Please submit your CV detailing your relevant experience including VAT, Corporation Tax and Gift Aid/partial exemption compliance and advisory work. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

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