Senior Policy Research Officer

Job Title: Senior Policy Research Officer

Directorate: Strategy and Knowledge

Team/Department (if specific): Policy and Public Affairs

Salary range: £35,423 (plus £3,366 London weighting)

Location: London (hybrid working, with at least one day- Tuesday- in the office). The post holder will occasionally be expected to travel to locations across the UK.

Working hours: 35 hours (flexible working may be considered)

Date Written/ Amended: March 2024

Context and Background

The NSPCC's vision is that together, we can stop child abuse and neglect. Through the collective power of our staff, volunteers, supporters, partners, and over 100 years of experience we will move closer to achieving that vision.

We launched our ten-year strategy in 2021, which is centred around three impact goals. This is the difference we want to make by 2031:

1. Everyone plays their part to prevent child abuse: we'll work together to make it easier for everyone to play their part and create a social safety net that prevents child abuse and neglect.

2. Every child is safe online: together, we'll transform the online world, so it's safe for every child to go online.

3. Children feel safe, listened to and supported: more children will be able to speak out, so they feel safe, listened to and understood - and abuse doesn't shape their future.

The Policy and Public Affairs (PAPA) team is part of the Strategy and Knowledge Directorate at the NSPCC. The Directorate exists to help shape the world around us - and what the NSPCC does - so that it reflects what we have learned and can help keep children safe from abuse.

The PAPA team works across the four nations of the UK to influence legislation, policy and practice to ensure they are as effective as possible in keeping children safe. We focus on policy priorities through our five core workstreams: the child protection system and children's social care; early years and health; child sexual abuse; online safety; and young victims and witnesses.

We are recruiting a Senior Policy Research Officer to develop and deliver our early years and health policy work to deliver real change and reform in the best interests of children.

The post holder will work in the UK/England part of the Policy and Affairs Team focussed on influencing the Westminster Government. The role involves a variety of responsibilities including policy research, policy development and public affairs. This is a great opportunity to drive policy work in an exciting policy area, by building a strong evidence base and contributing to effective influencing strategies.

Job purpose

The Senior Policy Research Officer will be responsible for undertaking policy research to achieve the NSPCC's strategic goals, using their skills and experience to strengthen the NSPCC's impact on public policy relating to the early years and health. In doing so, they will make a significant contribution to protecting the youngest children from abuse and neglect

Key relationships - Internal

· Reports to the England Policy and Public Affairs Manager

· Colleagues in the wider Policy and Public Affairs team across the UK

· Colleagues in the Media and Campaigns teams

· Colleagues in the Research and Evidence team

· Colleagues in the Services directorate (to ensure policy development is informed by experiences and learning from our frontline professionals/ volunteers)

· Colleagues in the Participation Unit (to ensure the involvement of young people in policy and influencing work)

Key relationships - External

· Key civil servants and policy advisers in the UK Government

· MPs and Peers in the UK Parliament

· Colleagues in relevant voluntary and statutory agencies

· Practitioner bodies

· Key academics, researchers and research networks

Main duties and responsibilities

· Develop and maintain a high level of expertise on priority policy areas, with lead responsibility for early years and health policy.

· Scope, develop and refine NSPCC policies on priority policy issues, putting forward the economic case for change where possible.

· Analyse a wide range of primary and secondary sources of evidence (such as official data sets and statistics, policy documents, academic literature, economic analyses, FOls and survey data) to develop innovative and evidence-based policy solutions to complex problems.

· Prepare high-quality policy outputs such as briefings, summaries, consultation responses, papers and presentations for internal and external audiences.

· Contribute to the delivery of our research activity, working with teams across NSPCC to assess policy and evidence needs, then design and undertake impactful research projects to address these.

· Contribute to the commissioning of methodologically robust and ethically sound research to investigate a substantial child protection challenge, including by devising clearly defined requirements for the work.

· Manage policy research projects from development and commissioning stage through to completion, providing direction and supervision to ensure the highest standards of delivery.

· Develop and maintain a network of key contacts across parliament, the civil service, and civil society, using this network to amplify the NSPCC's voice and take advantage of opportunities to influence policy making.

· Represent the NSPCC on relevant internal and external advisory groups, meetings, and stakeholder events.

· Act as media spokesperson for the NSPCC on relevant subject areas, including live and pre-recorded interviews as well as background discussions with journalists on policy relating to early years and health.

Responsibilities for all Staff within the Strategy and Knowledge Directorate

There is a set of responsibilities for all staff within each directorate.

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

· To maintain an overview of child protection policy and practice

· To maintain an awareness of own and other's health and safety and comply with NSPCC's Health and Safety procedures

· An active commitment to promoting ED&I, safeguarding and trauma informed practice

· An agile approach to work

· To maintain and develop competence in the use of IT systems

Person specification

1) Strong support for the NSPCC's mission and values.

2) Good understanding of child protection, early years, health or related public policy areas combined with knowledge of the wider legal, government and media context.

3) Excellent policy development skills, with the ability to develop and refine policy solutions to complex problems.

4) Proven ability to undertake research (qualitative and/ or quantitative) and analyse findings, with an ability to design methodologically robust and ethically sound research that is delivered to a high standard and agreed timescales.

5) Experience of successfully presenting research accurately to make a clear and compelling case for policy and legislative change.

6) Excellent communication skills including a clear and concise writing style, combined with good oral presentation skills, that can be tailored to a variety of audiences.

7) Good public affairs skills, with strong knowledge of parliamentary processes, sound political judgement, and experience of contributing to the delivery of influencing strategies to secure support from decision makers in parliament and beyond.

8) Ability to work on own initiative with strong organisational and project management skills, including demonstrable experience of project managing small research projects, working at speed and under pressure when required, while successfully managing project progress, risks and quality.

9) Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to build constructive working relationships with external stakeholders, as well as to work effectively as part of an internal, cross­ departmental team.

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.