Senior Communications Manager

Thrive at Five’s vision is a society where every child can thrive and achieve their potential. Our mission is to help children in their early years develop strong foundations for life and learning. Focusing on some of the UK’s most disadvantaged communities, our place-based model support’s positive development from pregnancy to five. We achieve sustainable change by unlocking the power of parents and carers and enabling collaboration to coordinate and strengthen early years systems and pathways of support.

Since Thrive at Five was founded, the organisation has grown considerably with projects in Stoke-on-Trent, Redcar and Cleveland, and a third pathfinder in Scotland starting later this year and a fourth earmarked. We are at an exciting moment as we look to expand our brilliant team and bring in additional skills needed for Thrive at Five to continue embedding our existing work in Stoke-on-Trent and Redcar & Cleveland and scale our work to a further two places across the UK over the next couple of years, doubling our reach and impact.

To help us in this next phase of development we are recruiting for a newly created position – Senior Communications Manager. This exciting role sits within our national team and will lead the ongoing development and delivery of Thrive at Five’s external communications, ensuring we can reach and engage with a diverse range of audiences from national early years influencers to parents in our regional sites. The role will have two main areas of focus: 1) National communications: establishing Thrive at Five’s national presence to influence policy, funding and practices and attract future partners (funders, future pathfinder areas and other strategic partners); 2) Regional Communications; work with our local backbone teams to deliver a communications strategy which supports our two strategic drivers; 1) to build relationships and strengthen understanding of the early years with key professional stakeholders, and 2) to reach local parents to build their knowledge, confidence and skills and encourage them to take up support on offer.

You will have solid strategic communications experience, with an excellent track record in developing and executing innovative communications plans. You will be comfortable working in a fast paced environment and committed to the need for continued learning and improvement necessary for Thrive at Five to develop a new place-based model for supporting early childhood development. The successful candidate will bring experience of managing a broad range of stakeholders and supporting a network of partners and will be adept at managing and coaching staff, with the ability to upskill team members. You will also have excellent organisational and project management skills. It would be beneficial to have experience of working nationally with engagement across local teams, and ideally with good experience of how to best utilise digital communications.

Thrive at Five are partnering with Prospectus to recruit for this vacancy. To apply please submit your CV and a two page supporting statement, preferably in Microsoft Word/PDF format. The statement should outline your motivation for joining Thrive at Five and why you feel you would be a good fit for this role. You should also demonstrate your experience and skillset with examples relating to the Person Specification section in the Job Pack. If you have any further questions or would like to know more about this opportunity please contact Steven Fraser from Prospectus via email. 
 
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