Job Description

Save the Children UK has an exciting opportunity for a collaborative and child-focused individual with strong experience in participation, co-production or community engagement to join us as our

Participation Manager - South Yorkshire

, where you will work directly with children, young people and families in Sheffield to ensure their voices shape our work and influence change to end child poverty.



This is a new and exciting position that comes out of our ambitious strategy in the UK and South Yorkshire.

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.



In the UK, our mission is focused on ending child poverty. We work alongside families, partners and communities to build long-term, place-based and national change, rooted in lived experience and driven by data and evidence.

About the role

As

Participation Manager - South Yorkshire

, you will lead the development and delivery of participation activity with children and families with lived experience of poverty across South Yorkshire. You will build partnerships with organisations who hold strong, trusting relationships with families experiencing poverty, supporting them to share their experiences and participate in local and national influencing, co-design, and advocacy. Working closely with internal teams and local partners, you will help ensure our work is rooted in lived experience and truly responsive to community voices. Your work will be instrumental in shaping Save the Children UK's efforts to end child poverty.



This role will also require approximately 2 days per week working with community partners in Sheffield, and we also expect travel across the South Yorkshire region as our partnerships grow.



If you're committed to equity, participation and making sure families are heard and empowered--

we'd love to hear from you.

In this role, you will:

Build and maintain trusted relationships with children, young people and families in Sheffield, ensuring their engagement is meaningful, regular and safe. Facilitate safe, inclusive sessions where families can share their concerns and contribute to shaping our work and wider policy change. Support families to participate in co-design, research and influencing activities that contribute to ending child poverty. Collaborate with colleagues across campaigns, media, policy and safeguarding to embed family voices into key moments and communications. Create and use participation tools to gather insights and ensure experiences inform organisational decisions and advocacy. Maintain strong knowledge of participation best practice and deliver all work to the highest safeguarding standards. Record and monitor engagement activity, contributing to project reporting and evaluation.

About you

To be successful, it is important that you have:

Experience of working with children, families or communities to influence change, particularly through participation or community organising. Strong knowledge of safeguarding and the ability to facilitate safe and inclusive engagement activities. Confidence building trusted relationships with individuals from a range of backgrounds, especially those facing poverty or exclusion. A working knowledge of effective participation practice and policies, particularly in the UK context. Excellent project management skills and the ability to work independently and flexibly within community settings. 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 in the attached Documents.

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: Save the Children | Careers

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-employment Checks:

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.

For anything else you can email us on: careers@savethechildren.org.uk

Division: UK Impact
Location (Role): Manchester
Contract Type: Permanent Contract
Full / Part Time: Full time (flexible working options available)
Closing Date: 30 June 2025
Salary Range : 39,000 - 48,800
Hours Per Week: 35