Deputy Director – Research and Evaluation – CSA Centre

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 Deputy Director, Research and Evaluation. This is a key leadership role within the CSA Centre, central to our ambition to raise awareness of the true scale and nature of sexual abuse and to drive evidence-informed improvements in policy and practice.

About The Role
The CSA Centre aims to inform and improve policy and practice at local and national levels by identifying, generating and sharing high quality evidence on the current scale and nature of child sexual abuse and what works to prevent and tackle it, and our extensive research, evaluation and monitoring activity is central to that mission.

Leading our highly skilled and experienced research and evaluation team, you will play a key role in developing and overseeing the CSA Centre's research and evaluation plans over the immediate and longer term, helping us to ensure that our publications, practice resources and policy and communications activity are robust, evidence-informed and accessible to a wide audience, driving real change in the response to child sexual abuse across England and Wales.

As a member of the CSA Centre's Senior Management Team, you will have a leadership role across our multi-agency, multi-disciplinary team, enabling you to draw on expertise from a wide range of different professional backgrounds. You will lead our strategic engagement with research and evaluation leads from across Government departments and key stakeholder groups, and contribute to our wider influencing activity with senior leaders at local, regional and national level.

We are looking for an experienced manager and leader with strong skills and significant experience of designing, planning and overseeing research projects and programmes of monitoring and evaluation on child sexual abuse, or closely related issues, using a wide range of methodologies. You will have demonstrable expertise in qualitative and quantitative research and evaluation, an in-depth knowledge of the current research landscape in relation to child sexual abuse, and experience of translating organisational objectives into a strategic and cohesive research and evaluation plan.

As Deputy Director, Research and Evaluation, you will play a role tackling child sexual abuse alongside the work of our colleagues across practice, policy, communications and training. This is important work - the CSA Centre conservatively estimates that one in ten children will experience some form of child sexual abuse before age of 16, and 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 – and your leadership is essential to help us do it

If you would be interested in joining the team and shaping change, please visit our website for more details:

CSA Centre roles are currently funded until 31 March 2027, in line with our current grant funding arrangements. This will be reviewed in late 2026, as future funding for the CSA Centre from 2027/28 onwards is confirmed.
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.

Established since 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.

Please note due to the high volume of applications for some posts, this advert might close before the displayed closing date. We recommend that you apply for this role as soon as possible.
Barnardo's believe in creating equality of opportunity in the workplace and supporting people to manage their work-life balance; we are therefore open to offering flexible working arrangements.

At Barnardo's we are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and we expect all staff and volunteers to share in this commitment. Our safer recruitment processes mean that the safety and welfare of the child is paramount at every stage of the process and therefore, we adopt rigorous scrutiny in our pre-employment checking. This post is subject to a range of pre-employment checks including a Criminal Records Enhanced Disclosure for the successful candidate.

About Barnardo's
At Barnardo's we believe in children – no matter who they are, what they have done or what they have been through. Please read about our basis and values following the link below. You will be asked questions relating to them as part of the recruitment process for this role.

Our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) is reflected in our values and our practice, and we have invested in this area of our work to ensure that we can deliver on our commitments to be an inclusive employer. EDI is a key enabler of our purpose as a charity and we want to ensure that the diversity of our teams is reflective of the communities we serve and that we continue to learn and develop our work with a focus on inclusion. We particularly encourage applications from candidates from Black, Asian and Minoritised Ethnic Communities, candidates who are LGBT+ and Disabled candidates.