External Relations Officer - Policy and Public Affairs

Location: Central London (Chancery Lane/Farringdon area) with hybrid working from home
Starting salary: £30,000-34,000pa depending on experience, plus excellent benefits
Contract: Permanent
Working pattern: Full-time (open to a conversation about flexible working options, including reduced hours or 4 days compressed working pattern)
Closing date: 30 September 2024
Interview date: 15 October 2024

If you have a passion for policy and public affairs this is an exciting opportunity to join our dynamic, growing mental health charity as our new External Relations Officer. You will play a key part in helping us to strengthen the mental health workforce and make a positive impact on people’s lives.

Think Ahead supports people living with mental health needs by supporting a strong and thriving mental health workforce. We are experts in recruitment, professional training and leadership development for mental health practitioners in the NHS and local communities, ensuring the right people can deliver the right support at the right time.

Through our flagship programme we have recruited and trained 1,000 mental health social workers to date, and we are extending our reach to ensure that we can support NHS and other employers to recruit and retain key people right across the mental health workforce.

As the External Relations Officer you will:

- Ensure the organisation has a good understanding of relevant policy and sector developments, and that we are aware of opportunities to influence.
- Work with key internal groups to keep developing our understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing the mental health workforce.
- Support the organisation to identify and build relationships with key external stakeholders.
- Help to build our profile as sector workforce experts by generating content such as blogs, and by identifying speaking opportunities for our internal specialists.

We are looking for someone with good communications instincts who is passionate about policy and public affairs, and has a ‘can-do’ attitude and a desire to learn and develop. We don’t need you to be highly experienced in all three areas (communications, policy and public affairs), we are happy to work with the right candidate to develop your skills and experience.

We offer a supportive working environment which include hybrid working practices. We expect staff to work from the office at least one or two days per week (which ideally includes Tuesdays) and the remaining days can be worked from home.

We offer excellent employee benefits, including generous annual leave entitlement, plus additional office closure over Christmas, enhanced family friendly leave, flexible working around our core hours of 10am to 4pm, a matched pension scheme with up 7% employer contributions, an employee assistance programme and more.

If this sounds like the just the opportunity and challenge you’ve been looking for to complement your skills and experience, we look forward to receiving your application.

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