The role

Scottish Women’s Aid has an opportunity to join their Policy team. This is an exciting position where the role holder will be responsible for working on policy relating to children and young people and domestic abuse, violence against women and girls, and gender related topics. They will work closely with the Membership, Training and Communications teams.

Background

Scottish Women’s Aid is Scotland’s leading voluntary sector organisation working to end domestic abuse and promoting effective policy and practice responses for women, children and young people who experience domestic abuse. We are the umbrella organisation for 32 autonomous Women’s Aid groups delivering direct services to women, children and young people across Scotland.

What you’ll do

Working across third sector organisations you will build and maintain relationships to input to policy and influencing, as SWA as well as jointly with others. You will maintain good working relationships with civil servants, challenging ideas and find solutions where necessary.

The role includes inputting to and submitting consultation responses, researching and writing briefings, preparing for SWA to providence evidence in parliament, keep our communications team up to date with policy inputs and changes, and input to good practice stemming from policy changes. All of these roles, requiring great working relationships across the organisation, but especially with Membership, Training and Communications.

What We Need

We’re looking for someone with experience in a similar role, with specific knowledge of the Scottish policy landscape and the potential that offers. We’re looking for someone who can work across domestic abuse as it relates to children and young people – examples include the Children’s Hearing system, child contact, the welfare system. We ask that you’re a self-starter, ready to apply these skills creatively to meet our strategic priorities. Excellent written and verbal communications skills go without saying: you’ll be skilled in the ability to engage confidently with a range of different audiences, and be adept at writing to suit them, working alongside colleagues across SWA and our members across the country.

We’re looking for someone who has:

• Knowledge of the Scottish policy landscape
• Awareness and understanding of the feminist analysis of domestic abuse and the impact on women, children and young people
• Demonstrable track record of developing and writing successfully in a policy context
• Highly organised approach to effective planning, delivery and the development of applicable tasks
• Drive to make a difference in a fast moving time of policy

Location

Blend of home working and office, based in Rose Street, Edinburgh or can be entirely home based anywhere in the UK. Please talk to us about your flexible working requirements!

What we offer

There are many reasons to work for Scottish Women’s Aid. We have a great working culture and our mission and vision attracts a brilliant staff team. Your hard work is rewarded with a package of support and benefits including:

• Flexible working - We offer flexible hybrid working options for the majority of our employees. Some posts are eligible for full-time homeworking. We also offer flexibility for staff and work/life balance through a number of flexible working options such as flexi time, condensed hours, job sharing.
• Pay - SWA are a Living wage employer, our pay and grading system offers a competitive starting salary and yearly progression.
• Annual Leave - We offer a full-time annual leave entitlement of 30 days (210 hours) per year plus 10 Public Holiday days (70 hours) per year. Leave is accrued at the rate of 3.33 days (23.3 hours) per month.
• Pension - SWA believes it's important that we help you save for your retirement so access to Nest pension scheme is given to all eligible employees. SWA contributes 10% of gross contractual earnings on the provision that the employee contributes a minimum of 3% towards their pension contributions.
• Learning and Development - SWA supports and develops staff to ensure they have the necessary skills, knowledge and abilities. There is an internal schedule of training on key skills and knowledge relevant to all staff. There is also scope to attend ad hoc training for employees who are working to develop specific skills.
• Enhanced Maternity and Paternity Pay - SWA offers staff who meet the criteria for Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) an enhanced maternity pay of 20 weeks on full pay and 20 weeks on half pay.
• Wellbeing - As part of SWA’s commitment to staff wellbeing, staff are offered access to a confidential 24/7 health and Wellbeing service with AIG which provides confidential advice, counselling and legal support to all staff, and where applicable, immediate family members.
• Bike 2 Work - An interest-free loan to purchase a bike, can be arranged up to the value of £1,000.
• Edinburgh Leisure Gym Subsidies - Edinburgh based staff are able to access Edinburgh Leisure facilities for the reduced price of £1 per session.

POSITIVE ACTION

Applications will be accepted from women only under Schedule 9, part 1 of the Equality Act 2010.

Scottish Women’s Aid is an equal opportunities employer, all women, including women with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, may apply for women-only roles.

SWA are committed to recruiting a diverse workforce that is representative of the people we serve.

We are taking positive action to address an under-representation of minoritised and marginalised women within our workforce. We offer Disabled and racially minoritised women the option of requesting that their application is considered under the terms of our Guaranteed Interview Schemes. You will be asked if you wish to be considered when you complete our application form.

If you would like to discuss the job or any adjustments, whether due to disability or any other reason, please contact us on recruitment@womensaid.scot or on the phone on 0131 226 6606.

We’re looking for a Policy and Engagement Officer to join the team at the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission, which helps resolve issues raised by the public about work carried out by Scottish lawyers and oversees complaint handling across the legal services sector. We help hundreds of people a year, and our team make decisions which make a difference to people’s lives.

We are an equal opportunities employer and we’re open on both professional and work experience. We want to build a diverse team, so would positively encourage applications from all candidates regardless of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, religion, pregnancy or maternity.

We’re a small team of around 60 staff, which makes for a close, friendly team to work in. We deliver serious work, but we also have a great deal of fun as a team working together. It also means there are great opportunities to get involved in different aspects of our work, from driving improvements in our customer service, to running sprints to test new ways of working.

In this role you will help us shape our thinking, build our understanding and communicate our views on key issues to our partners, stakeholders and users. You will also help ensure that we develop robust policies to help govern our complaints and regulatory work, drawing on strong horizon scanning, robust research and meaningful consultation.

You will build strong relationships with key stakeholders at all levels and manage the organisation’s engagement with them. You will be responsible for drafting reports, responses and other public communications and responding to enquiries from politicians, regulators, consumer groups and other bodies. You will also develop policy proposals and recommendations across a range of issues and deliver briefing and policy advice to board members and senior staff.

You will be enthusiastic, motivated and able to work with others. You’ll bring strong relationship building skills and stakeholder engagement experience. And you’ll be a confident communicator with strong writing skills and an ability to adapt your approach for different audiences.

You must be able to demonstrate experience of policy development and a proven ability to analyse information to produce robust findings and recommendations.

You will need to be able to quickly grasp complex or technical issues. It’s a benefit if you have knowledge of regulation policy, consumer policy, legal issues or equalities issues, but we’re very open to hearing from those with experience in other areas.

This is a hybrid role. We require that you attend our Edinburgh office a minimum of one-third of your working time a quarter (we estimate around 2 days per week for a full-time colleague). There may also be some specific events that you will need to attend in person. Please note your induction will include more office days in the beginning to help you settle into the SLCC, learn about the role and to provide the most support. We also offer flexible working hours that means when you are working from home you can work anytime between 6am and 10pm and 7am to 7pm in the office.

You will also have 42 days paid holiday, including public holidays (pro-rata for less than 35 hours a week). We also offer a Group Self Invested Personal Pension, company sick pay scheme, life assurance, cycle to work scheme, travel loan scheme, volunteer days and a confidential employee assistance programme offering free advice and support across a range of work and personal issues.

We also pride ourselves on being an enjoyable place to work, with a supportive environment, opportunities for self-development, staff charity events and the opportunity to socialise. We have a staff led Wellbeing and Inclusion Group. In our last staff survey 97% said they have a good working relationship with their colleagues.