The Senior Legal and Policy Manager leads Together's influencing and scrutiny work and manages the legal and policy team. The postholder supports the Director and Assistant Director’s relationships with the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government, leads our annual State of Children's Rights report and our Implementation Strategy Group, and leads our access to justice work. Through these, the role is central to holding Scotland to account for its implementation of the UNCRC and wider international human rights treaties.

The role oversees the quality of Together’s legal and policy work, including our legal analysis, consultation responses and committee submissions, and assuring the legal content of our training and consultancy. In doing so it ensures that the specialist expertise held in the legal and policy team reaches every part of Together's work.

Working closely with the Director, and alongside the Assistant Director and the Child Rights Implementation Manager, the postholder ensures that learning from our members and from our capacity building work informs Together's influencing, and that our influencing in turn shapes what we offer members.

About Together

Together (Scottish Alliance for Children's Rights) has a vision of Scotland becoming a place where all babies, children and young people can grow up in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding. To achieve this, we work with our membership to take action to ensure that babies, children and young people growing up in Scotland have all their human rights respected, protected, and fulfilled, all the time. Our three strategic priorities reflect a holistic approach to achieving our mission, focusing on proactive measures, responsive actions, and building the strength of the children's rights community to ensure the rights of every baby, child and young person in Scotland. Together is at the forefront of influencing policy, enhancing understanding, and ensuring the integration of children's rights across all aspects of life in Scotland, making us a pivotal voice and authority on children's rights.

Our values

• Courageous: We are independent, and we challenge when we need to. We always stand up for children's human rights.
• Collaborative: We involve, engage, and consult our members, children and young people, parents and carers. We are representative, open, and transparent in all we do.
• Constructive: We do things in a respectful way. We support all those we work with and for to reach their full potential.
• Inclusive: We actively enable everyone to participate equally and with dignity, especially those babies, children and young people whose rights are most at risk.
• Creative: We bring fun and creativity to everything we do, embracing imaginative and innovative thinking.

Following successful incorporation of the UNCRC into Scots law, Together is working to ensure this new law becomes reality for children. The post-holder will play a crucial role in supporting Scotland to implement children’s rights, by supporting adults across Scotland to use law and policy in practical ways.

The Child Rights Implementation Manager leads the planning and delivery of Together's capacity building work, with a particular focus on our Communities of Practice, and leads the growth of our membership. The postholder designs and drives the Community of Practice model and delivers both Communities of Practice, building the capacity of members and public bodies to embed a children's human rights approach in their own practice.

The role requires the confidence to interpret children's human rights law and policy to shape and drive capacity building activity like training, consultancy and Communities of Practice, drawing on the legal and policy team where deeper analysis is needed. This is also the route by which practice evidence reaches Together's influencing work, through the analysis and learning summaries drawn from Together’s capacity building activity.

The postholder works to the Assistant Director, who sets the strategic direction for capacity building and consultancy, and works closely with the Senior Legal and Policy Manager and the Senior Legal and Policy Officer so that evidence and learning move in both directions between Together's two teams.

About Together

Together (Scottish Alliance for Children's Rights) has a vision of Scotland becoming a place where all babies, children and young people can grow up in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding. To achieve this, we work with our membership to take action to ensure that babies, children and young people growing up in Scotland have all their human rights respected, protected, and fulfilled, all the time. Our three strategic priorities reflect a holistic approach to achieving our mission, focusing on proactive measures, responsive actions, and building the strength of the children's rights community to ensure the rights of every baby, child and young person in Scotland. Together is at the forefront of influencing policy, enhancing understanding, and ensuring the integration of children's rights across all aspects of life in Scotland, making us a pivotal voice and authority on children's rights.

Our values

• Courageous: We are independent, and we challenge when we need to. We always stand up for children's human rights.
• Collaborative: We involve, engage, and consult our members, children and young people, parents and carers. We are representative, open, and transparent in all we do.
• Constructive: We do things in a respectful way. We support all those we work with and for to reach their full potential.
• Inclusive: We actively enable everyone to participate equally and with dignity, especially those babies, children and young people whose rights are most at risk.
• Creative: We bring fun and creativity to everything we do, embracing imaginative and innovative thinking.