Project and Change Support Intern

Full Time
- Sunderland

**The Organisation**:
Together for Children successfully work to deliver children’s services on behalf of Sunderland City Council.

Together for Children aim to develop modern and responsive services that make a difference to children and families throughout Sunderland, keeping children safe from harm and ensuring they have the opportunity to fulfil their true potential. The organisation holds a strong desire to be excellent in all they do and work tirelessly to deliver the vision and priorities of the company.

Working with Sunderland City Council and wide-ranging partner organisations, the organisation ensures children’s services across Sunderland are delivered by a suitably qualified and experienced workforce and deliver optimum value for money; offering high quality services and bringing commercial skills to public service delivery.

**Purpose of the Role**:
Together for Children (TfC) is undertaking a wide scale transformation programme and is delivering projects required to move to new ways of working and improve service delivery.

This will include changes to business processes, technology, culture and ways of working and will impact on services across the organisation, partner organisations, large numbers of staff and have significant budget implications. Projects will also involve working with multi-agency stakeholders and other partners.

The post holder will provide support to the delivery of projects and programmes in line with guidance supplied by the organisations TMO (Transformation Management Office).

Under the overall direction of their line manager, the post holder will undertake a range of project and change support activities relating to the organisation’s children’s services directorate and wider transformation programme. These activities may include:

- Collect, collate and analyse data;
- Produce project reports;
- Research information and services;
- Contribute to service re-design.

The post-holder will also undertake, with supervision, project support and change activity, of a varying nature and complexity. The post holder will be undertaking a range of activities and so will need to be able to prioritise and balance their own work accordingly.

**Key Responsibilities**
- To undertake project activities to assist in the delivery of one or more projects under the day to day direction of one or more project managers.
- To undertake, with supervision, projects of a varying nature and complexity and following a standard project methodology.
- To collect, collate and analyse data in a consistent manner and record such data appropriately.
- To undertake tasks as set to a high standard within defined timescales.
- Provide administrative coordination to one or more projects and to service tasks.
- Contribute to problem solving in circumstances where project’s progress has slowed.
- Contribute to identifying issues and risks in one or more projects.
- To liaise between projects which have identified interdependencies.
- Ensure that the Programme Manager, Project Managers and other team members are kept informed of task progress appropriately.
- Appraise the Programme and Project Managers of any new issues or risks as they emerge.
- Develop and maintain positive and cooperative working relationships with members of all project and task associated teams.
- Work collaboratively as required with project teams and service colleagues.
- Share skills, knowledge and learning to ensure programme success.
- Contribute to the preparation and monitoring of project efficiencies and targets.
- Support project budgetary monitoring to ensure that spend is recorded and reported appropriately.
- Contribute to ensuring that resources are used in a planned way to maintain an efficient and cost-effective service which takes full account of both changing needs and resource availability.
- Maintain appropriate data sets to ensure the smooth running of projects.
- Interrogate systems to produce reports with a high degree of accuracy and in compliance with deadlines.
- In conjunction with programme, project managers and service team colleagues:

- Contribute to and implement action plans to defined timescales;
- Contribute to the quality assurance of projects and service areas;
- Maintain appropriate project document configuration to ensure an auditable trail of activity.

**Additional Information/Other Requirements**
- Other duties and responsibilities allocated which are appropriate to the grade of this post.
- The post will be based within Together for Children’s Finance Directorate.
- The post holder will be required on occasion to travel within the City as required to undertake the role.

**Qualifications**

**Essential Requirements**
- Literacy and Numeracy skills to level 3.
- NVQ Level 3 in Business admin or equivalent by experience.
- Project Management / Business related qualification (desirable)

**Knowledge And Experience**
- Good working knowledge of project managem