The Cares Family (North London Cares, South London Cares, Manchester Cares and Liverpool Cares) are seeking a brilliant Director of Programmes to drive local quality, innovation and accountability in each of our branches in Manchester, Liverpool, north London and south London – ensuring The Cares Family coheres into a national model meeting our values and achieving our targets, objectives and vision.

The Director of Programmes role is a brand new position, working with and reporting to the Chief Executive, which requires experience of people management and programmatic oversight. You will need to reflect and operationalise the values of the organisation – including optimism, authenticity and constant improvement – to lead a team of four, and soon five, Heads of Programmes each leading their own programmes teams.

In your day-to-day work, you will lead a number of key projects meeting a number of key challenges and opportunities – ensuring our safeguarding, records, and storytelling procedures are upheld to the highest standards; supporting our Heads of Programmes to manage their teams and various moving parts to meet their local priorities; managing key national partnerships; and guiding the creation of new Cares Family branches.

All of that requires a broad skill set, with particular emphasis on organisation, prioritisation and communication, and characteristics including leadership, confidence, personal warmth, determination and resilience.

To do that, you will work predominantly from one of our four offices in London, Manchester or Liverpool – and will be required to travel between them on around 30 working days of the year. So we need someone who understands and is motivated by the demographics and social challenges of our biggest cities, who is dynamic – and in particular who is passionate about people and can clearly promote our vision for building friendships across deepening divides in order to tackle isolation and loneliness.

You will be trusted to work dynamically and independently across these exciting young charities, with a growing profile and backing from major local and national supporters. You will also be provided with all the professional support, accelerated development opportunities and networks to play a lasting, transformative role in the development of the “Cares” vision and family.