Senior Politics and Public Affairs Advisor - 6693

Save the Children UK has an exciting opportunity for a Senior Politics and Public Affairs Advisor. 

Please note: This role will require up to 3 days a week in the office/London for external meetings. 

About Us 

Save the Children UK believes every child deserves a future. In the UK and around the world, we work every day to give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm.  When crisis strikes, and children are most vulnerable, we are always among the first to respond and the last to leave.  We ensure children's unique needs are met and their voices are heard. We deliver lasting results for millions of children, including those hardest to reach. 

About the role 

As Senior Politics and Public Affairs Advisor you will Lead our parliamentary engagement across the work we do delivering high-impact change strategies whilst building and holding relationships with parliament.  You will lead our government relations and Public Affairs work in helping to reduce child poverty and improve childcare. Working closely with colleagues in media to influence and government and address these issues. 

In this role, you will:   

• Lead political influencing and develop advocacy strategies for Save the Children's work. 
• Identify lobbying opportunities and enable colleagues to exploit them fully using powerful evidence, trusted relationships, and innovative and creative tactics that help Save the Children stand out in a crowded arena.  
• Provide strategic political insight and ensure systematic monitoring, analysis and dissemination of political intelligence. 
• Represent SCUK externally, actively networking and building constructive relationships with parliamentarians, government/opposition, advisers, officials, trade unions, political parties, think tanks, NGOs and media to support SCUK's influencing and profile building. 
• Manage SCUK's contact with ministers, and senior civil servants; identifying and creating opportunities to influence processes through lobbying, consultations, inquiries, bills and other mechanisms. 
• Work with team members to ensure that campaigning and advocacy is integrated and consistent, and that campaigning outputs are designed to create policy change. 

About you 

To be successful, it is important that you have:  

• Significant operational experience of structures, processes and trends in the UK political system. 
• Knowledge of international development, conflict and humanitarian issues and / or social policy particularly child poverty  
• Track record of building and maintaining relationships which lead to policy impact, either in Parliament, with Government or soft power institutions.  
• Proven ability to think and plan strategically, with a track record of achieving political change 
• Demonstrable understanding of, and experience in managing, political risk and an understanding of the operating environment for charities, particularly around challenges to charity campaigns and advocacy. 
• Ability to effectively build, manage and work within networks and coalitions for lobbying and advocacy purposes. 
• Commitment to Save the Children's vision, mission and values. 

What we offer you: 

Working for a charity provides one of the best benefits there is – a sense of purpose and reward for helping others. However, we understand the importance of giving back to our employees to ensure a happy and healthy working environment and work/life balance. 

• We focus on flexibility, inclusion, collaboration, health and wellbeing both in and outside of work. 
• We provide a wide range of benefits which will reward your hard work, motivate you, and inspire you to work to improve the lives of children every day. You can read more about our benefits here. 

To learn more about the position, please review the Job Description in the attached Documents. 

Closing date:  Sunday 21st April 

Please note: To avoid disappointment, you are advised to submit your application as soon as possible as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a high volume of applications are received. This is to ensure that we can manage application levels whilst maintaining a positive candidate experience. Unfortunately once a vacancy has closed, we are unable to consider further applications.

Ways of Working:

The majority of our roles can be performed remotely in the UK, but there are likely to be times when you will be required to come to your contracted office (up to 2-4 days per month or 6-8 days per quarter).  This will be agreed with your Line Manager and team and is intended to be time spent on collaborating with colleagues and relationship building. 

Please note: travel costs to your contracted office will be at your own expense. 

Flexible Working - We are happy to discuss flexible working options at interview.

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion: 

Save the Children UK believes in a world that is fair, inclusive and equitable where all children have the opportunity to change their world. We apply this to our workforce and we are committed to developing and supporting a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organisation where all employees have a sense of belonging and feel that they can be "Free to Be Me". We are not looking for just one type of person - we want to recruit people who can add fresh perspectives, innovative ideas or challenge that disrupts the risk of group think. 

We are especially interested in people whose childhood experiences - of life on a low income, of migration, of being in a racialised community, of the care system, of being LGBT+ or in an LGBT+ family or living with (or with someone with) a disability - help us to see things we might otherwise miss. Whatever your story is we want to hear it because we know that different voices, ideas, perspectives and knowledge, working together will enable us to better the lives of children around the world. This is the reason why we are all here. 

To see our full statement please visit this link: https://jobs.savethechildren.org.uk/our-policies/diversity/

Salary Structure: 

Save the Children is committed to paying staff in a fair and equitable way and will benchmark all salary offers in line with the pay of existing staff. To see our full offer please visit this link: https://jobs.savethechildren.org.uk/what-we-offer/

Interview Expenses: 

Candidates should note that unfortunately it is not our policy to reimburse expenses accrued when attending interviews at Save the Children UK unless you are requested to attend an interview in an alternative location to where the role is based.

Pre-employmentChecks:

Any Employment with Save the Children UK will be subject to the following checks prior to your start date:

• a satisfactory police record check to include a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check and/or an International Criminal Record Check (If applicable)
• receipt of satisfactory references
• proof of eligibility to work in the national location for this role

If you have any questions, we have an FAQ section here. For anything else you can email us on: careers@savethechildren.org.uk