Policy and Communications Officer, CSA

This is an exciting opportunity to join the friendly, dynamic, multi-disciplinary team at the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse (CSA Centre) as our new Policy and Communications Officer, a unique role to develop and deliver policy and communication plans to improve the response to child sexual abuse in England and Wales.

About role:

The Policy and Communications Officer is responsible for developing and delivering policy influencing activities and effective communication and promotion across the CSA Centre's programme of work through improved identification and better response with oversight from the Communications and External Affairs Manager and Assistant Director Policy, Communications and Strategic Influence.

We are looking for a motivated person with strong skills and experience in policy and communications roles, and the ability to manage an extensive and varied workload to deliver multiple objectives. The successful candidate will play a key role in shaping the CSA Centre's policy and communication plans over the immediate and longer term, working across the wider CSA Centre team while also supporting a range of government departments to ensure that national policy and guidance is informed by the latest practice and research evidence in relation to child sexual abuse.

Working within the Policy and Communications Team at the CSA Centre you will play a role tackling child sexual abuse alongside the work of our colleagues across practice, research and training. Right now, the CSA Centre conservatively estimates that one in ten children will experience some form of child sexual abuse before age of 16. Our ambitious programme seeks to improve the knowledge, skills and confidence of professionals (social workers, teachers, social workers, nurses etc.) in identifying and responding to child sexual abuse. We have already made great progress, but there is much more to be done.

If you would be interested in joining the team and shaping change, please visit our website for more details: http://www.csacentre.org.uk/about-us/opportunities/

This role is currently funded until 31 March 2023, in line with the grant funding arrangements for the CSA Centre. This will be reviewed in late 2022, with potential for extension as future funding for the CSA Centre from 2023/24 onwards is clarified.

About us

We are the Centre of Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse (CSA Centre). Our aim is to reduce the impact of child sexual abuse through improved prevention and better response. To tackle child sexual abuse we must better understand its causes, scope, scale and impact.

First established in 2017, we are a multi-disciplinary team that is funded by the Home Office, hosted by Barnardo's and we work closely with key partners from academic institutions, local authorities, health, education, police and the voluntary sector. We're proudly independent and our team will challenge any barriers, assumptions, taboos and ways of working that prevent us from increasing our understanding and improving our approach to child sexual abuse.

We bring about change by:

• Collating and analysing existing research, policy, practice and the real experiences of those affected, and filling the gaps we identify with new research, insights and analysis;
• Using that evidence and insight to challenge and improve existing policy and practice, develop new approaches and increase everyone's knowledge and confidence to more effectively tackle the issue.

This role is home based with regular travel required, usually to London.

The CSA Centre acknowledges that tackling child sexual abuse can feel challenging but is incredibly rewarding and positive when actively making change. Our open working environment ensures that there is support for all employees, across the team and with access to a therapist, if needed. Please do get in touch if you would like to discuss any aspect of this further.

We believe in creating equality of opportunity in the workplace and supporting people to manage their work-life balance; we are therefore are open to offering flexible working arrangements.

The CSA Centre is committed to having a diverse and inclusive workforce. We actively encourage applications from disabled candidates and candidates from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, as they are currently under-represented at the CSA Centre.

When completing your application please refer to your skills knowledge and experience in relation to the Person Specification and Job Description.