Project Development Manager (Education) Maternity Cover 12 Months From June 24

Context and Background

The innovative services that we develop are a critical part of the NSPCC’s fight for every childhood. We transform lives by working directly with some of the most vulnerable children and families. This role will help develop our service offer in respect of preventing and tackling child sexual abuse, with a focus on the ongoing development, coordination and implementation of our secondary education service. This aims to support secondary education settings to be places that foster healthy relationships and keep, young people safe from abuse.

Job purpose

Scoping, leading and project managing programmes, services and products within the Development and Implementation Team within set timescales and budgets.

Managing a matrix approach to service development and design, bringing together people, resources, skills and talent from across the organisation to conceptualize, design and create new programmes, services and products Working with a range of internal and external stakeholders to ensure that all new developments are informed and underpinned by evidence, have a theory of change and support the NSPCC in delivering its strategy Working with research colleagues to plan how outcomes and impact will be measured for each new development.

Key relationships - Internal

Reporting to the Associate Head of Development with close links to the Head of Development and Implementation, the post holder will work closely with an internal project team, managing workstream leads from digital, comms, content development, schools service, income generation and subject matter experts and have frequent interaction at Director level and other senior stakeholders. They will be in frequent contact with multiple teams and directorates as they operate a matrix style of Project Development.

Key relationships - External

This role will develop relationships at Director level and other senior stakeholders across a range of external partners including from Education, Children Services, Police, Health Partners and the third sector for the purpose of influencing, learning, collaboration and engagement. They will also work closely with participation and people with lived experience who support service development.

Main duties and responsibilities

1. Project delivery

• Accountable for end to end delivery of the development and delivery of projects within the D&I team, with a focus on education
• Ensure projects are well managed and desired outcomes are achieved and benefits realised
• Lead a matrix approach to service development and design bringing together a multifaceted team from inside and outside of the NSPCC

2. Governance:

• Establish and maintain an effective governance and project framework for any development
• Ensure the correct oversight and controls are in place
• Ensure project paperwork is complete including risks and issues logs
• Produce up to date high quality reports and data in relation to the project

3. Quality:

• Work with quality assurance processes to ensure all services developed are to a high standard and regularly reviewed for accuracy
• Review, scrutinise, challenge and apply evidence from a wide variety of sources to inform development
• Work with research and evidence colleagues to test and learn and improve services

4. Relationships

• Actively seek input from a range of subject matter experts and those with lived experience as part of any development
• Work closely with colleagues from across multiple teams and departments during all stages of development

Responsibilities for all Staff within the Strategy and Knowledge

A commitment to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people

A sound understanding of and commitment to equality, diversity, and inclusion. Commitment to living our values and guiding principles, as set out in our strategy.

Person specification:

1. Knowledge relevant to NSPCC strategic objectives, specifically the education sector, relationships and sex education
2. Experienced in managing complex, fast paced, multi-agency/client relationships and cross organisational teams to deliver multiple projects
3. Significant experience in the successful design and development of innovative, evidence based services, ideally within the education sector
4. Application of structured project management techniques to plan, monitor and deliver projects involving many stakeholders and teams in their delivery
5. Understanding of implementing evidence-based programmes, within public services
6. Evidence of excellent interpersonal, influencing and networking skills and an ability to establish credibility with external professionals and stakeholders
7. Highly developed communication and presentation skills, able to explain complex technical information clearly and confidently, to a range of technical and non-technical audiences
8. Financial acumen and experience of financial modelling and developing and managing budgets
9. A personal commitment to ending cruelty to children, and to making safeguarding everyone’s responsibility.

This role is homebased/flexible but does require some travel within the UK.

Safer Recruitment

As an organisation, we are committed to creating and fostering a culture that promotes safeguarding and the welfare of all children and adults at risk.

Our safer recruitment practices support this by ensuring that there is a consistent and thorough process of obtaining, collating, analysing and evaluating information from and about candidates to ensure that all persons appointed are suitable to work with our children and adults.

The recruitment and selection of our people will be conducted in a professional, timely and responsive manner and in compliance with current employment legislation, and relevant safeguarding legislation and statutory guidance.

Our principles:

• Always seek to recruit the best candidate for the role based on merit including their skills, experience, motivation and competencies.
• Our robust recruitment and selection process should ensure the identification of the person best suited to the role and the organisation.
• Committed to diversity and equality of opportunity and will interview all applicants (internal and external) who self-declare at application as having a disability and who meet the minimum requirements in the person specification of the vacancy they are applying for.
• We will make reasonable adjustments at all stages of the recruitment process in order to enable successful candidates who declare disabilities to start working or volunteering their time with us.
• Any current member of staff or volunteer who wishes to apply for vacancies and is suitably qualified will be considered and addressed fairly and objectively based on their merit.
• As an organisation committed to safeguarding, we will ensure all under 18’s joining the organisation will have ongoing risk assessments to ensure their role and activities are safe and appropriate.
• All documentation relating to candidates will be treated confidentially in accordance with the GDPR legislation.