Are you an experienced finance professional looking to make a significant impact in the third sector? Avenue, a leading charity in the North East of Scotland, is seeking an exceptional Finance Manager to join our senior leadership team. This pivotal role will ensure our financial health and sustainability, driving our mission to support families, children, and individuals through life’s challenges.

About Us:

For over 70 years, Avenue has provided a range of services across Grampian, designed to help families and individuals overcome obstacles and improve their relationships and wellbeing. With values rooted in effectiveness, integrity, respect, credibility, innovation, and independence, we are committed to making a real difference in our community.

The Role:

As Finance Manager, you will lead all aspects of our financial operations, from strategic planning and budgeting to cash management and financial reporting. You'll work closely with the CEO and the Board of Trustees, providing insightful analysis and advice to support strategic decision-making. Your responsibilities will also include:

• Developing and implementing financial policies and controls
• Leading the annual audit process and preparing statutory accounts
• Supporting funding bids with excellent financial analysis and planning
• Supporting managers in budget management and financial literacy
• Ensuring compliance with financial, charity, and company legislation

What We’re Looking For:

• Fully qualified (ACA, ACCA, CIMA) or part qualified with commensurate experience
• Proven success in a senior financial management role
• Strong knowledge of relevant legislation and financial regulations
• Excellent communication, organisational, and problem-solving skills
• Proficiency in finance software (preferably Xero) and advanced Excel skills
• Experience in strategic financial planning and risk management

Why Join Avenue?

This is an exciting opportunity to bring your expertise to a vibrant and impactful organisation. You'll work in a supportive and collaborative environment, with opportunities for professional development and to influence the financial direction of our charity.

The person specification gives a broad indication of expectations. Please get in touch if you

feel you would have a lot to offer even if it isn’t an exact match with our requirements.

Please note, we do not offer sponsorship for work visa’s therefore you need to have the right to work in the UK to apply for any of our posts.

Do you want to join an organisation that has been named recently as a Top 100 company to work with by The Sunday Times?

If you do and would like to have an informal chat before applying then please call Rhonda Wilson, Head of Admissions and Programmes, on 07715 238337.

About Aberlour Sycamore Children’s Houses

Aberlour Sycamore Services’ vision is to provide warm, loving homes for children where everyone learns, laughs, grows into their future and is treasured always. We have a strong ethos of values and a culture that enables us to Be Brave and to Keep the Promise of involving the children and young people as fully as possible in taking decisions that affect their lives.

Our home in Fort William is a Hybrid Model, we have a residential service for children and young people as well as a service that we call Sustain Plus, which supports whole families by providing both emotional and practical support. We work with families and parents to secure a nurturing environment for children up to 18 years old. We also help parents/caregivers develop their ability to care for their children, provide practical parenting skills, and engage with their community. Our service provides flexible support of varying intensity and aims to encourage the development of family routines, resilience, and improved parental confidence.

We are looking to appoint a House Manager who will join our strong and thriving Residential/Sustain Plus community in Aberlour.

What we are looking for

We are looking for an enthusiastic individual with a passion for supporting vulnerable children and whole families to achieve the best possible outcomes in their lives. The successful candidate will have the drive, determination and cultural values to be able to lead their team to empower the children and young people to make the changes which will ultimately transform their lives.

We want someone who believes that all children and families are deserving of love and someone who will support the team to ensure that our children and families are able to live fulfilling lives without having restriction imposed on them in their everyday lives.

The person we choose to join us must have experience of working in and leading practice in a children’s house and with families. They must be visible to the team and children to ensure that the vision and values are lived every day - This will include working evenings and weekends.

Our homes provide a rich environment that provides safety, relationships, growth and healing for the children and adults who live and work there. To achieve this the successful candidate must have knowledge about developmental trauma, how this will have impacted children’s early life experiences and understand how to lead a team to ensure that every response a child receives takes account of their trauma.

A comprehensive support package focussed on achieving excellence in practice is provided to all of our teams and the successful candidate will also receive clinical supervision, provided externally to support their professional practice development and well-being.

If you share our vision of Being Brave for every child, young person and families, and Keeping the Promise, and you have the skills and passion required to meet the challenges of this role we look forward to hearing from you.

Ideally, candidates will have experience of leading a team within a residential childcare environment involving a residential shift rota and also experience in supporting whole families. You will be required to have or be willing to work towards the qualifications for being a manager in a residential childcare facility: a relevant professional qualification at SCQF level 9 or above plus a management qualification at SCQF level 8 or above.

What we Offer

As well as a supportive team and excellent training opportunities, we want all our employees to feel valued and rewarded for the vital work they do. When you work with us, we'll recognise your efforts with generous annual leave, an excellent employer pension scheme and a range of deals and discounts across various retailers.

Benefits:

• 29 days annual leave PLUS bank holidays, with up to 5 additional days for continuous service and option to buy or sell leave
• Gain professional qualifications and excellent training/development opportunities
• Flexible maternity, adoption, and paternity packages
• Pension with up to 7% employer contribution with included life assurance cover
• Staff discount portal and Blue Light Card eligibility with 15,000 national retailers discounts.
• Vulnerable children in the UK need your help

Wherever you work in the Action for Children family, you'll be helping to change the lives of the most vulnerable children in the UK.

Last year, we helped more than 687,000 children and families across the UK. From direct work in communities to national campaigning, we are focused on making sure every child has a safe and happy childhood, and the foundations they need to thrive.

Why Action for Children?

Working here is more than a job. Everyone in the Action for Children family is passionate about protecting and supporting children. It's the sense of purpose that drives us every single day. Because we know that, when we work together, we can make a huge difference to bring lasting improvements to vulnerable children's lives.

A bit about the role

The Dundee Youth Housing Service, in collaboration with the Dundee City Council, fulfills its statutory duty by supporting homeless young people aged 16 and above. The aim of the service is to engage with young people and families at the earliest opportunity. To be responsive, to prevent situations escalating, and take the pressure off the local authority front line services.

As the initial point of contact for any young person facing homelessness in the city, our service plays a crucial role. Within the strategic housing partnership, Action for Children stands as the sole organisation dedicated to preventing young individuals from becoming homeless. Our service operates 24/7.

Our primary focus is to provide temporary accommodation for young people who have been assessed as homeless. We extend our support to young individuals who are homeless, have care experience, or are seeking asylum.

How you’ll help to create brighter futures

Some key responsibilities for Children's Services Manager are;

• Leading, motivating and managing a range of services and support staff to deliver a quality service
• Championing top-tier safeguarding practices by overseeing procedures and advocating for the protection of children, families, and youth with unwavering commitment.
• Collaborating with teams in business development and fundraising to forge and enhance partnerships with current and prospective funders, gathering local insights, and crafting proposals or bids to maintain or expand our service reach.
• Leading the charge in managing transitions, including the initiation, expansion, downsizing, or restructuring of services and community projects.

Let’s talk about you

• A qualification relevant to the services within the remit of this post as well as successful management and delivery of commissioned services.
• Developing and maintaining effective networks, relationships, partnerships and contacts to improve service outcomes.
• Significant experience of managing and developing operational services for children, young people and their families.
• Improving service provision through the workforce, addressing challenges within the management of people and service provision (in particular improving employee performance).
• Demonstrable financial and commercial acumen and awareness through management of budgets, costing and analytics.

This is an exciting opportunity to join a thriving national charity, as part of our high-performing Business Development team. You will use a wide range of commercial and interpersonal skills to develop the way our services support children, young people and families.

As a Business Development Manager, the core area of your work is working with teams of Barnardo's colleagues to produce compelling proposals to commissioners and partners. As such, you'll be able to demonstrate:

• Strong organisational skills
• Meticulous attention to detail
• The ability to elicit and articulate great ideas
• Excellent written and spoken communication

You will need to be a good writer, communicating ideas effectively on paper with an ability to analyse large volumes of information to develop clear and compelling responses to tenders. It is critical that you can build strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders to support the development of proposals and service design.

You will manage all aspects of proposals and tenders, leading the development and delivery of bids, working to deadlines, ensuring that we present strong business cases and bids that underpin successful outcomes. In addition, there will be the opportunity to help us develop new services and innovations in priority growth areas, monitor market intelligence, assess commercial and contract risks and work alongside operational colleagues in Children's Services across Scotland and Northern Ireland,

When completing your application please refer to your skills, knowledge and experience in relation to the Person Specification and Job Description.

This is a part-time role (20 hours) and some travel may be required across the Scotland and/or Northern Ireland. Barnardo's is happy to accommodate different working patterns, subject to business need.

If you would like an informal discussion about this role, please contact Nick Whiteside on 07591 190515.

The starting salary for this role is £45,955.00 (Full Time Equivalent) £23,354.00 (pro rata), other salaries are shown so that applicants are aware of the progression salaries.

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.

Pay & Reward Framework

We know that our colleagues go above and beyond in delivering our vital work, driven by their passion and commitment to Barnardo's values. We also know that we can only realise our ambitions and achieve better outcomes for more children, thanks to the talent, hard work and creativity of our people.

For all these reasons, we are committed to a new approach to pay and reward, to ensure it is fair, attractive and progressive, which was rolled out in April 2023. This is a positive change for the charity, and a part of our People & Culture Strategy. It will assist us in supporting colleagues to belong, thrive and grow in their colleague journey at Barnardo's and in time will offer clear routes of progression for colleagues in both their career and their pay.

Whilst the full pay band and salary range is advertised, our approach to starting salaries is to appoint between the minimum to mid-point of the pay band – this ensures that pay steps are available to reward our colleagues annually based on their contribution to excellence and alignment to our values and behaviours. More details on Barnardo's pay framework can be found upon application.

Benefits

Workplace Offer: What it means for you

The world of work has changed. We are understanding of what works best for our colleagues both current and future as we look to embrace this new way of working. Our hybrid working initiative is based on trust, flexibility and empowerment. We understand our workplace offer means different things to different people, and we encourage those conversations. This may mean working at one of our stores, services, working at home, at one of our Collaboration Hubs or any combination of these.

• 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.
• 26 days annual leave plus bank holidays, increasing after 5 years service
• The ability to buy up to another 5 days annual leave via our HolidayPlus scheme
• A host of family friendly leave options including company Maternity Paternity and Adoption pay; together with all family additional leave options
• Service related sick pay from day 1
• Access to a Group Personal Pension with a matched 4% or 6% contribution from Barnardo's. Ability to pay via salary sacrifice to garner both tax and NI savings on your own contribution
• Death in service cover of 4x annual earnings for all staff contributing to our Group Personal Pension
• Cycle2work scheme
• Interest free season ticket loans
• Discounts and cashback from at high street shops including major supermarkets, cinemas, gyms, leisure/theme parks, holidays and much more via our Benefit Portal
• 20% discount at Barnardo's stores
• Opportunity to purchase a health cash plan to claim towards dental, glasses, therapy etc
• Free access to round the clock employee assistance program for advice and support
• Access to Barnardo's Learning and Development offer

*T&C's apply based on contract

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.

Our basis and values