Development Officer

**Job Title: Development Officer - Parent Participation**

**Reports To: Policy Director**

**Location: Cardiff - agile working from home or in the office**

**Hours of Work: 21 hours per week**

**Main purpose of role**:
The purpose of the post is to work towards developing a Wales wide system/platform for gathering parent’s views; offering a two way approach to enable an avenue for parents voices to be heard and to feed in to national policy and practice development.

By developing this approach, you will be working towards achieving a coproduction model for carrying out meaningful participation with parents, on matters concerning their children and young people.

Parents’ voices and involvement are vital if we are going to enhance our work with families, whilst promoting the rights of the child.

The United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) recognises that parents are often the most important defenders of their children’s rights. Throughout the provisions of the UNCRC, there is explicit recognition of the importance of parentsand the family to children. It is clear that the best interests of the child are usually served by supporting the child’s family, and the UNCRC places obligations on governments to invest in and provide families with the support that they need. Therefore,it is important that we listen to, involve and support parents in their vital role.

The programme of work will build on a scoping exercise undertaken in 2021-22 to inform our approach to engaging parents nationally, which clearly highlighted that parents 'want to have a voice and to be heard’ and be given opportunities to share their views,ideas and opinions.

**The main duties and responsibilities**:
**The post holder will**:

- Actively engage with a range of professionals and organisations within Wales who are working locally with parents, to inform the direction and development of this work.
- Establish a national forum to bring together those organisations working in this area and interested parties in Local Authorities
- Review current local ways of working, by undertaking a gap-analysis and mapping exercise to develop a best practice transferrable approach, and gain a better understanding of the levels of diversity of parental involvement.
- Undertake further consultation, engagement and development work with those organisations already engaging and seeking parents’ views.
- Harness the engagement of parents already involved in local participatory structures
- Recruit a steering group of parents to take forward this work and drive the direction.
- Identify and support key representatives for each Local Authority in Wales to take a lead role, playing a proactive coordination function.
- Trial and test a variety of consultation and participation approaches via a mixed method approach.
- Develop and set up a suitable online platform, which would allow us to reach a wider audience and offer an avenue for a greater number of parents to share their views on national policy and related matters.
- Work at a community level to develop and support Parent champions, with the aim of reaching those parents who are seldom heard

**Key Requirements - Desirable**
- Ability to communicate both orally and in writing through the Welsh language
- Working knowledge and experience of digital media, design tools and software packages
- Experience of working with parents/carers from wide range of diverse backgrounds.
- Excellent understanding of Welsh politics, and UK policy matters of relevance to Wales
- Proficiency in developing and maintaining databases.
- Experience of successfully obtaining funding from trusts, foundations or other institutional donors