DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMMES & POLICY
Salary: £70,000 FTE.
Position: Permanent, full time, open to flexible and hybrid working, with an expectation of regular travel to the national office in London and out to Practices or senior stakeholder meetings across England as needed.
Location: Coram Campus, Brunswick Square, London, WC1N 1AZ.
Reporting to: Chief Executive.
Line managing: Head of Practices, with an expectation of also line managing External Affairs & Communications Lead in due course.
Start date: April 2025.
THE ROLE
SHiFT’s Director of Programmes & Policy strategically and operationally directs the implementation and delivery of SHiFT through our SHiFT Practices and realises opportunities for SHiFT’s work to influence policy and practice reform. This is an exciting opportunity for someone driven by SHiFT’s Mission to break the destructive cycle of crime for children and young people, with the tenacity and skill to deliver innovation and translate learning from it to stimulate systems change within complex, multi-agency operational environments that include Children’s Social Care and Youth Justice.
The Director of Programmes & Policy role is a new role for SHiFT, which has emerged because of our growth and the need to increase SHiFT’s strategic and operational capabilities. By welcoming a new senior leader, we want to ensure that we have enough capacity and capability to consistently deliver excellence through our Practices and to realise opportunities for continued innovation, growth, and influencing consistent with our mission to shift systems.
SHiFT’s Director of Programmes & Policy will hold overall responsibility for stewarding a SHiFT Practice from inception to scoping, mobilisation and launch, and then into effective delivery of each 18-month Programme cycle as we ‘infiltrate’ Host Organisations with the aim of shifting systems. Working differently with children and young people caught up in, or at risk of, cycles of crime, and doing so from an ‘insider-outsider’ position (where all our Practice colleagues are employed by public services rather than directly by SHiFT), is complex work.
You and your small team of Practice Development Leads, led by our Head of Practices, will need to carefully hold the tension between consistency and flexibility, getting and staying closely alongside organisations that host SHiFT Practices as ‘critical friends’ to ensure that the SHiFT Commitments are met as we grow, learn and innovate. You will need to be confident in using data to identify opportunities for improvement in implementation and design, sharing insights to inform the organisation’s strategic direction as part of SHiFT’s Senior Leadership Team and feeding them into relevant governance forums including SHiFT’s Practice Committee and Board of Trustees.
As the programmatic aspects of your responsibilities become secure, you can expect opportunities for strategic and operational leadership in relation to SHiFT’s policy and practice influencing to increase. Specific areas for focus in this work will crystallise, in part, through the development of SHiFT’s next strategy (development work running throughout 2025 with a new strategy launched in early 2026).
To thrive in this Director of Programmes & Policy role you will be flexible, comfortable with ambiguity and iterative working, and have exceptional problem solving and relationship building skills. You’ll bring substantial experience of operational and strategic leadership in contexts relevant to SHiFT’s work and have a proven track record of developing services and ensuring they are delivered at pace, and to a consistently excellent standard.
EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY
SHiFT is actively committed to the eradication of discrimination and disadvantage on the basis of race, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy and maternity, age, marital status and on the basis of socio-economic circumstances. We are determined for SHiFT to be a diverse and inclusive organisation that is enriched by a wide range of backgrounds, expertise, and experiences.
As a charity working within youth justice, we are keenly aware of the over-representation of children who identify as Black, Brown or Mixed Heritage within the youth justice system. Challenging racism is a key priority for SHiFT. We therefore particularly encourage and welcome applications from people of diverse ethnic backgrounds.
THE RESPONSIBILITIES
Your principal responsibilities will be to:
Ensure the consistent implementation and ongoing fidelity of SHiFT through our Practices.
Lead the scoping, mobilisation, and launch of new Practices.
Oversee the operation of 18-month SHiFT Programme cycles, ensuring high support and high challenge partnerships with organisations that host SHiFT Practices.
Implement and iterate SHiFT’s quality assurance and quality improvement processes.
Plan and coordinate local, regional, and national practice facing activities.
Identify and realise opportunities for improvement in the operation of SHiFT Practices.
Translate insight from SHiFT’s ideas in action to inform and influence wider policy and practice change.
Contribute to whole organisation strategic development and operational effectiveness as a member of SHiFT’s Senior Leadership Team.
YOU WILL BRING
Beliefs and alignment:
The belief that all people are capable of change.
The belief that young people who display behaviours linked to offending can be supported.
An alignment to a culture of high trust and high expectation.
An alignment to SHiFT’s Values – ambition, courage, flexibility, and tenacity.
A preparedness to challenge the status quo and be positively disruptive.
Dynamism, tenacity, and determination.
Curiosity and a commitment to learning.
Experience, knowledge, and skills:
Knowledge and experience of dynamic risk management is desirable.
Experience developing and embedding audit and oversight processes is desirable.
Experience of contract management is desirable.
Experience leading geographically dispersed teams is desirable.
Experience developing and selling policy change recommendations is desirable.
Qualifications and background:
Previous senior leadership role.
Previous experience of senior programmatic / operational leadership.
Right to work in the UK.
This post is subject to a police check of previous criminal convictions with the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).
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Salary: £70,000 FTE.
Position: Permanent, full time, open to flexible and hybrid working, with an expectation of regular travel to the national office in London and out to Practices or senior stakeholder meetings across England as needed.
Location: Coram Campus, Brunswick Square, London, WC1N 1AZ.
Reporting to: Chief Executive.
Line managing: Head of Practices, with an expectation of also line managing External Affairs & Communications Lead in due course.
Start date: April 2025.
THE ROLE
SHiFT’s Director of Programmes & Policy strategically and operationally directs the implementation and delivery of SHiFT through our SHiFT Practices and realises opportunities for SHiFT’s work to influence policy and practice reform. This is an exciting opportunity for someone driven by SHiFT’s Mission to break the destructive cycle of crime for children and young people, with the tenacity and skill to deliver innovation and translate learning from it to stimulate systems change within complex, multi-agency operational environments that include Children’s Social Care and Youth Justice.
The Director of Programmes & Policy role is a new role for SHiFT, which has emerged because of our growth and the need to increase SHiFT’s strategic and operational capabilities. By welcoming a new senior leader, we want to ensure that we have enough capacity and capability to consistently deliver excellence through our Practices and to realise opportunities for continued innovation, growth, and influencing consistent with our mission to shift systems.
SHiFT’s Director of Programmes & Policy will hold overall responsibility for stewarding a SHiFT Practice from inception to scoping, mobilisation and launch, and then into effective delivery of each 18-month Programme cycle as we ‘infiltrate’ Host Organisations with the aim of shifting systems. Working differently with children and young people caught up in, or at risk of, cycles of crime, and doing so from an ‘insider-outsider’ position (where all our Practice colleagues are employed by public services rather than directly by SHiFT), is complex work.
You and your small team of Practice Development Leads, led by our Head of Practices, will need to carefully hold the tension between consistency and flexibility, getting and staying closely alongside organisations that host SHiFT Practices as ‘critical friends’ to ensure that the SHiFT Commitments are met as we grow, learn and innovate. You will need to be confident in using data to identify opportunities for improvement in implementation and design, sharing insights to inform the organisation’s strategic direction as part of SHiFT’s Senior Leadership Team and feeding them into relevant governance forums including SHiFT’s Practice Committee and Board of Trustees.
As the programmatic aspects of your responsibilities become secure, you can expect opportunities for strategic and operational leadership in relation to SHiFT’s policy and practice influencing to increase. Specific areas for focus in this work will crystallise, in part, through the development of SHiFT’s next strategy (development work running throughout 2025 with a new strategy launched in early 2026).
To thrive in this Director of Programmes & Policy role you will be flexible, comfortable with ambiguity and iterative working, and have exceptional problem solving and relationship building skills. You’ll bring substantial experience of operational and strategic leadership in contexts relevant to SHiFT’s work and have a proven track record of developing services and ensuring they are delivered at pace, and to a consistently excellent standard.
EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY
SHiFT is actively committed to the eradication of discrimination and disadvantage on the basis of race, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy and maternity, age, marital status and on the basis of socio-economic circumstances. We are determined for SHiFT to be a diverse and inclusive organisation that is enriched by a wide range of backgrounds, expertise, and experiences.
As a charity working within youth justice, we are keenly aware of the over-representation of children who identify as Black, Brown or Mixed Heritage within the youth justice system. Challenging racism is a key priority for SHiFT. We therefore particularly encourage and welcome applications from people of diverse ethnic backgrounds.
THE RESPONSIBILITIES
Your principal responsibilities will be to:
Ensure the consistent implementation and ongoing fidelity of SHiFT through our Practices.
Lead the scoping, mobilisation, and launch of new Practices.
Oversee the operation of 18-month SHiFT Programme cycles, ensuring high support and high challenge partnerships with organisations that host SHiFT Practices.
Implement and iterate SHiFT’s quality assurance and quality improvement processes.
Plan and coordinate local, regional, and national practice facing activities.
Identify and realise opportunities for improvement in the operation of SHiFT Practices.
Translate insight from SHiFT’s ideas in action to inform and influence wider policy and practice change.
Contribute to whole organisation strategic development and operational effectiveness as a member of SHiFT’s Senior Leadership Team.
YOU WILL BRING
Beliefs and alignment:
The belief that all people are capable of change.
The belief that young people who display behaviours linked to offending can be supported.
An alignment to a culture of high trust and high expectation.
An alignment to SHiFT’s Values – ambition, courage, flexibility, and tenacity.
A preparedness to challenge the status quo and be positively disruptive.
Dynamism, tenacity, and determination.
Curiosity and a commitment to learning.
Experience, knowledge, and skills:
Knowledge and experience of dynamic risk management is desirable.
Experience developing and embedding audit and oversight processes is desirable.
Experience of contract management is desirable.
Experience leading geographically dispersed teams is desirable.
Experience developing and selling policy change recommendations is desirable.
Qualifications and background:
Previous senior leadership role.
Previous experience of senior programmatic / operational leadership.
Right to work in the UK.
This post is subject to a police check of previous criminal convictions with the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS).
#J-18808-Ljbffr
