Children & Families Public Relations and Communications Manager

 Fixed Term Contract - 2 Years

Grade 5 - between £40,221 - £48,474 Consultation grade - subject to formal evaluation under the Pay Equity Review

Working 36.5 hours per week. 

The role is hybrid however the post holder would be required to work from Birmingham City Council buildings as business needs dictate. 

About us

Do you want to make a real difference for children, young people and families in Birmingham? Do you have a passion for collaborative strength based, relationship centred decision making and service design and provision? 

Outside of London, Birmingham is the UK’s most diverse city and has the largest number of young people in its city than any of its European counterparts. Birmingham is on a journey of significant change, ready to reset, reshape and restart. To do this well we recognise that we need to strengthen our permanent arrangements across fundamental functions by increasing internal expertise and capacity.

Birmingham’s Children and Families Directorate are recruiting a series of posts to expand the Strategy, Governance and Planning service. This is truly an exciting opportunity to showcase your skills, knowledge, and experience to facilitate meaningful change for the children, young people, and families of Birmingham. 

Our team ethos is centred on appreciation for individuality and individual contribution and expertise and the value of this to the team’s collective success and ability to sustain positive outcomes. We strive to ensure that our working environment is inclusive, supportive, and empowering. 

In the Children and Families Directorate we are looking for bold and ambitious Children & Families Public Relations and Communications Manager to join our new and expanding team. We are working across a large, diverse city through an exciting, yet challenging time of transformation and improvement.  If you are looking for your next challenge and have the passion to secure the very best opportunities for children and young people, join our compassionate and dedicated team. 

About the role

You will be the providing professional and technical communication, engagement and participation advice and assurance; offering support and guidance to officers to ensure that communication, engagement, and participation related activity, is managed and delivered in a legal, ethical, effective and accountable manner. You will build effective working relationships with internal and external partners and communities in order to inform and strengthen co-production and partnership collaboration across the directorate. You will support the ongoing design, co-production and delivery of a Directorate communications and engagement package, positioned to ensure that the Directorate maintains a consistent outward and inward communication and engagement feed. We strive to ensure that our interface with Children, Young People and Families is accessible, inclusive, engaging and reflects the communities that we serve. This role will be centre to ensuring that we maintain an effective multi media communications offer and robust public relations arrangements. 

About you 

You will have excellent knowledge and understanding of best practice and creative and innovative solutions regarding communication and engagement work. You will be experienced in developing communication engagement plans and implementing communication and engagement processes and procedures (including stakeholder mapping) You will be experienced in designing, organising and managing high profile events for staff and the public. You will have significant experience of building effective working relationships with stakeholders and influencing at all levels, including partners. 

Putting children, young people and families across Birmingham first at all times is at the heart of everything you do, you will manage resources, operate within financial priorities to deliver value for money for the Council and our strategic partners while ensuring the best possible services and outcomes for children, young people and families.  

You will be an experienced, driven, creative and a passionate advocate for children and young people. You will work to instil a nurturing empathetic culture that values high-performance, and inclusivity, shaping and developing the skills of your team so that each and every person can get the most from their role, feeling encouraged to thrive. 

In return, we’ll match your commitment to us with opportunities to grow and develop your knowledge and experience as well as other rewarding career progression routes. We also offer competitive salaries and annual leave, membership of the local government pension scheme, and access to a variety of employee assistance programmes, to support the well-being of our workforce.

For any informal enquires please contact: Fayth Skeete (fayth.skeete@birmingham.gov.uk)

Closing date 17th October 2024 at 23:59

You must upload a Supporting Statement via the attachments part of your application. This is required for shortlisting; you need to describe how your experience and skills fit the essential criteria for the role as specified in the Person Specification. If you do not attach your Supporting Statement, your application will not be considered. We want to encourage applicants to take the time to celebrate their experience, knowledge and skills by outlining their suitability to this role through clear examples of previous experience/practice and transferable skills. 

Please ensure that your supporting statement does not exceed 1500 words, we will only consider information that falls within the stipulated word limit.

Birmingham City Council is an accredited Disability Confident Leader employer, and we are committed to employing, retaining and developing all of our people.

We want to ensure your recruitment journey with us is a positive and equitable one, so please let us know if there are any reasonable adjustments, additional support, accessibility needs, or if there is any way in which we can support you through your application.

Interviews for this post will take place in-person. Shortlisted candidates will be provided with further information.

We welcome applications from people with caring responsibilities and flexible working options will be considered.

A Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check will be undertaken

Proof of Right to work in the UK will be required for all applicants in accordance with UK Home Office requirements, before any employment offer can be confirmed.

Non-UK applicants (excluding Ireland) would be required to hold a relevant Visa from the UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI).

Job Description and Person Specification:

2120 - v3 Children & Families Public Relations and Communications Manager FS 1.pdf