Regional support hub manager jobs in Nottingham

Thames Rivers Trust (TRT) is part of The Rivers Trust movement. We focus on the promotion and delivery of an ecosystem-based approach to improving the River Thames, working with partners including Thames Water, The Rivers Trust, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and a network of Catchment Partnerships across the Thames Basin, to deliver an integrated approach to managing the river basin for people, biodiversity and the environment.

We are recruiting a Programme Manager to lead day-to-day delivery of the Water Company Partnership: a developing arrangement between TRT, The Rivers Trust, Thames Water and ZSL that works alongside and helps coordinate support for the 27 Catchment Partnerships of the Thames Basin. You will oversee delivery across all five of the Partnership's workstreams and be accountable to the Partnership Board for progress, combining day-to-day programme management with support to the Board's strategic oversight.

In practical terms, this role exists to help integrate Catchment Partnership hosts and partnership members with Thames Water's delivery programme, and to upskill those partnerships so they are equipped to plan, fund and deliver more on the ground themselves, building the same kind of productive relationships with other funders and partners too, not just Thames Water. It is a genuine opportunity to shape how a major water company and its environmental partners work together, and to help turn that partnership into real, measurable improvements for rivers and the wider environment across the Thames Basin.

Your responsibilities will span five workstreams:

● Governance: catchment partnership maturity and tiering, network structure and governance models

● Monitoring and Evaluation: river health scorecards, monitoring standards and evidence for investment decisions and Thames Water's PR29 submission

● Capability and Capacity, including CaPS: TRT's own Catchment Partnerships Support Programme, learning and development, and running the Thames Catchment Forum

● Catchment and Nature-based Solutions: supporting delivery of wetland, river restoration and storm overflow projects

● Blended Finance: developing environmental market mechanisms and diversified funding for Catchment Partnerships

You will also service the Partnership Board, coordinate quarterly reviews with individual catchment hosts, and act as TRT's key liaison with Thames Water, The Rivers Trust, ZSL and Catchment Partnerships across the region.

We're looking for someone with experience delivering environmental, catchment or nature-recovery programmes, strong partnership working and facilitation skills, and the ability to coordinate complex, multi-organisation programmes through influence rather than line management. Knowledge of the water sector, WINEP or AMP planning, nature-based solutions or blended finance would be an advantage, as would a project or programme management qualification.

Please note that we are interested in receiving and considering applications from candidates who may not tick every box. You may be just who we are looking for.

The details

Salary: £40,000–£42,000 per annum, dependent on experience

Hours: Full-time, 37.5 hours per week

Contract: Initially funded for one year, with planned funding for a further two years

Location: Thames Basin, home-based, with regular travel across catchments and to partner offices in London

Reports to: Chief Executive, Thames Rivers Trust

How to apply

Please send your CV and a covering letter, explaining why you're interested in the role and how you meet the person specification. More details in the full job description is available.

Closing date: 10pm, Sunday 30th August 2026

Interviews: Tuesday 8th and Wednesday 9th 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.

As a Relationship Fundraiser, you'll support and inspire individuals raising funds for the Motor Neurone Disease (MND) Association. Through excellent supporter care, you'll help maximise fundraising income while ensuring every supporter feels valued and recognised.

We're looking for someone who enjoys building relationships and meaningful connections that encourage ongoing engagement and long-term support. Whether your background is in fundraising, sales or account management, you'll be confident achieving targets and skilled at managing competing priorities.

As a Relationship Fundraiser, you'll work from home and travel across North and East Yorkshire including York, Bridlington, the Yorkshire Dales and Harrogate, building strong local connections and support fundraising activities.

Main Responsibilities

• Manage and grow relationships with fundraisers
• Provide outstanding supporter care, advice and guidance
• Support and encourage fundraisers to achieve and exceed their fundraising goals
• Identify opportunities to increase income and supporter engagement
• Maintain accurate records within the CRM system 
• Ensure all funds raised are processed correctly and within agreed timescales
• Promote fundraising opportunities, local groups and relevant activities where appropriate
• Ensure all fundraising activity complies with legal requirements, best practice and internal policies

About You

• Experience in fundraising, sales or account management
• Experience coaching, supporting or motivating individuals to achieve goals
• Success achieving income or performance targets
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal
• Strong relationship-building skills
• An inclusive approach, with respect for diverse backgrounds and perspectives
• Resilience, flexibility and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances
• Full UK driving licence and willingness to travel across the designated region

Essential requirement: This role requires regular travel to locations that are not reasonably accessible to public transport and/or travel between locations within working hours.  Applicants must therefore hold a current valid driving licence and have access to a suitable vehicle for business use.  This is an essential requirement of the role due to the nature and location of the work.  The MND Association will consider reasonable adjustments for disabled applicants in accordance with the Equality Act 2010.

Further information about working for the MND Association and full job description is available in the attached Candidate Pack.

We are committed to equality, diversity, and inclusivity. We work to remove barriers for everyone affected by MND, employees, volunteers, and stakeholders. As part of the Disability Confident Scheme, we guarantee interviews for disabled applicants who meet the role's requirements.

What We Offer

• 28 days holiday, increasing to 33 days after 5 years, plus Bank Holidays
• Access to UK Healthcare, including dental, eyecare, health screenings, and therapies
• 24/7 GP access via phone and video
• Life assurance and confidential counselling helplines
• Salary sacrifice schemes (Cycle to Work, Buy/Sell Annual Leave)
• Access to Benefit Hub for discounts on everyday shopping
• Enhanced pension scheme
• Opportunities for training and personal development

About Us

Motor Neurone Disease moves fast. It takes away time, it takes away independence and it has no cure. Every day we support people affected by MND.We fund ground-breaking research. We campaign for better care. We’re here for everyone who needs us. Because with MND, every day matters.