The Citizens Advice network in Scotland is the largest independent advice service in the country. Citizens Advice Scotland is a charity within this network – we act as a national organisation supporting and representing the service as a whole and the interests of citizens. At the heart of the network there are 59 individual citizens advice bureau across Scotland, all operating as independent charities in their own right, which focus on providing support and advice directly to clients. Each of these organisations is a member of Citizens Advice Scotland. We believe that every citizen should have access to free, impartial, and confidential advice that helps them make informed decisions, whenever they need it and however, they choose to access it.

Our vision is for a Fairer Scotland where everyone has the advice and information, they need to realise their rights, and that the barriers to accessing those rights are effectively challenged.

Citizens Advice Scotland is responsible for developing, implementing, and managing a series of projects which enable and support various national specialist services to be delivered with our network of 59 Citizens Advice Bureaux. The Lead Project Support Manager will have direct responsibility and accountability for the Project Management Office (PMO) and for ensuring effective service delivery and compliance across the portfolio of these projects.

Working alongside the Lead Project Delivery Manager your role includes managing a PMO team of Project Officers and coordinating their resource across projects within a matrix environment. You will also be responsible for coordinating support from other internal departments across the organisation to ensure consistency of delivery and meeting contractual obligations. Acting as a key departmental representative with our Network of Citizens Advice Bureaux, you’ll be responsible for liaising with Bureaux Chief Executives and Managers across Scotland along with other key stakeholders.

The PMO coordinates management information, data, and analysis requirements against governance, project controls and reporting needs, including programme level risk, change and performance management. You will be responsible for developing and co-designing new and innovative PMO tools and resources to meet future service needs and support for our systems, processes and procedures. Your aim should be to ensure our department delivers consistently and effectively, whilst proactively forecasting and anticipating future needs. This will be underpinned through maintaining the PMO’s focus on continuous improvement and a quality-of-service cycle of review and assessment.

This is an exciting time to join us where you can make a difference. Working within one of the largest directorates at CAS you will be collaborating with fellow managers and leading a dynamic and agile team at the forefront of a wide range of advice service delivery. Our services are even more critical now than ever before in helping those in need and are essential in helping citizens receive the necessary advice and support during these unprecedent times. As a line manager you are responsible for the PMO team and will be required to identify and manage the resources required, forecast and plan the work to realise the expected benefits as well as manage the project teams’ dependencies, workloads, and schedules.

We are flexible about your professional background and open minded about your career to date. You will need to be able to lead a Project Management Office function and engage with multiple stakeholders both internally and externally. You will be a compassionate manager with the ability to understand the challenges and opportunities that working within a membership organisation brings. You may well have experience of working in a charity, housing association or the broader public sector, though applicants from all sectors are welcome. You will have to be able to demonstrate the desire to put the people who matter most, our clients, at the heart of every decision.

Employee benefits

Citizens Advice Scotland offers excellent terms and conditions. We want our people to have a great work life balance, and we have designed our working practices and benefits to support this. Here are some of things our employees benefit from: a 35-hour full time working week, 40 days annual leave, genuine flexibility in working hours with a flexi-time system, and hybrid working opportunities for every role.

Citizens Advice Scotland is committed to promoting diversity and inclusion. We offer a range of family friendly, inclusive employment policies and flexible working arrangements to support all our staff. We are also committed to equality of opportunity for all and applications from individuals are encouraged regardless of age, disability, sex, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief and marriage and civil partnerships.

CAS provides options for hybrid working to allow employees to balance their time attending the office with time working from home. The number of days you will be able to work from home each week will be dependent on your job role and can be discussed as part of the recruitment process.

Why apply for this role?

Children’s Hearings Scotland (CHS) is undergoing an exciting period of reform, designed to make a step change in improving the outcomes for infants, children and young people who need us most. Children’s Hearings Tribunal Members play a vital role in Scotland’s society. They listen and make legal decisions for infants, children and young people. They ensure that the young person is at the heart of every decision taken – because every decision, no matter how big or small, has an impact.

As Quality Partner, reporting to the Quality Manager you will support the delivery of our ambitious Quality strategy, helping drive continuous improvement and ensure we are delivering effective and high-quality tribunals across Scotland.

This is a fantastic opportunity for an experienced Quality Partner who will use their passion and experience for quality to help drive organisational excellence. This role is pivotal in driving and monitoring consistent, reliable performance and high standards of operational delivery. You will play an important part in supporting our people to make high quality decisions that improve outcomes for infants, children and young people. You will deliver a quality offer that supports the knowledge and behaviours that are required of the Hearing Tribunal.

You will have a track record of delivering evidence-informed projects or services and be ambitious about achieving excellence. You will have skill, experience and enthusiasm with managing complexity and using data to deliver robust approaches to quality, monitoring, evaluation and improvement. Working as part of a small Quality team, you will help build and maintain processes to collect evidence and drive progress through the implementation of our strategic plan.

An experienced and effective leader, you will be working with the National Team and partners and must be able to build collaborative relationships. Through engagement and gathering evidence, you will reflect the experience and perspectives of the volunteer community. You will be committed to listening to the voice of people with lived experience of the care system to shape and influence what we do and how we do it.

You can find our Quality Strategy on our website.

Find a news article in Third Force News about Quality in CHS.

For information on how to apply, please see bottom of the advert.

Your Role

Ensuring an agile and robust quality offer, you will work to influence and collaborate with other functions across CHS including Practice and Standards, Participation, Learning and Local Delivery teams to ensure implementation alignment and relevance of the Quality Strategy and its operational delivery.

You will bring experience of working with project teams, diverse stakeholders and leaders to deliver tangible improvements. You will use this track record to work collaboratively, showing leadership and challenging practice and culture when necessary to deliver quality services. You will have excellent communication skills.

Gathering and communicating evidence and data of what we do well, and where we need to improve is a critical element of this role. Working with colleagues, you will help shape practice and policy. You will also influence learning with effective feedback loops that share good practice as well as understanding from situations when CHS has not fully met the expectations of children and young people.

You will play a key role in working with our Tribunal Delivery Managers, as well as supporting our network of 130 Panel Practice Advisor volunteers who work with CHS to improve quality.

Our Positive Outcomes Directorate team

This role sits with the Positive Outcomes directorate, which also includes Practice and Policy, Participation, Complaints and feedback and Learning. The role of the team is to engage with our strong volunteer community, and to raise the profile of who we are and what we do. You will collaborate with other departments and teams across the wider organisation.

Life at CHS

Our 2,500 volunteer Panel Members take part in children’s hearings in their local areas, making decisions with and for infants, children and young people. Our organisation also supports a network of 9 regional teams, made up of volunteers who support Panel Members in their local communities.

As an organisation that works within the children’s hearings system, we are passionate about making a positive contribution to improving outcomes for Scotland’s infants, children and young people.

You can read more about our core values HERE as well as view an introductory video to our organisation. We also offer a generous benefits package from hybrid working, flexi hours and a fantastic pension scheme - you check out our full benefits summary HERE.

Diversity and Inclusion

CHS is an equal opportunities employer. We encourage diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We actively encourage applicants from all protected characteristics and are committed to providing any reasonable adjustments required during application and assessment process, and upon joining us.