Strategic Project Manager

About Kinship

We are Kinship. The leading kinship care charity in England and Wales. We re here for kinship carers friends or family who step up to raise a child when their parents aren t able to.

Together, let s commit to change for kinship families.

About the role

We re seeking an exceptional and experienced project manager to deliver a pivotal role within our ground-breaking national Kinship Training and Support Service, funded by the Department for Education.

This is our largest contract, and this role is key to enabling our organisational activity. The service offers over 300 online and in-person training events and workshops per year, tailored to meet the specific needs of kinship carers. We need to ensure at least 4,600 kinship carers attend.

You ll be accountable for successful project delivery, working with executive project sponsors (Chief Operating Officer and Services and Digital Director) and workstream leads (Associate Directors and Heads of departments) to deliver KPI s to deadlines, escalating and managing risks early.

The type of person we're looking for

You ll have extensive experience in successful delivery of complex projects that include multiple workstreams and a range of internal and external stakeholders, with technical and non-technical stakeholders. Through your experience of planning, monitoring and controlling project delivery, you ll quickly set up the necessary systems and processes for success.

You ll bring strong leadership and communication skills to designing and implementing integrated plans, agreeing deliverables and ensuring accountability. You will need to own this programme of work, and you will need to move at pace. You ll interpret needs effectively, ensure clarity of roles and responsibilities and build project management capability. You ll have a solutions-focused approach and naturally motivate and inspire others to get things done.

Key responsibilities include:

• Work closely with project sponsors, steering group and core team to be accountable for delivery of the programme project KPIs.
• Use a flexible and collaborative approach to set up, deliver and mobilise projects ensuring delivery of vision, aims and objectives.
• Ensure full project documentation, robust project initiation and effective project management and processes ensuring key activity is on track.
• Quickly build detailed project and workstream plans on our project management tool (Asana), ensuring clear roles and responsibilities and supporting colleagues to use the tool effectively.
• Manage multi-department core team including consultants and agencies ensuring they are motivated and working well.
• Set up and implement processes and procedures for successful delivery.
• Support and work with all the workstream leads and deliver integrated plans across the service, focusing teams on what is most important for delivery to meet targets.
• Effectively manage internal and external project communications.
• Establish project documentation across initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling, and closure

Essential knowledge, abilities, skills and experience include:

Project Management qualification or commensurate experience.

• Extensive project management experience in planning, documenting and managing complex project set-up and execution and monitoring performance through the project lifecycle.
• Significant working experience of successful project delivery through effective management of risks, costs, time and milestones.
• Ability to influence others, communicate effectively and build collaborative and productive relationships, internally and externally.
• Proven ability to interpret and transmit the needs of the technical and non-technical teams.
• Ability to solve issues quickly, efficiently and creatively.
• Self-starter who can take the initiative and shape project
• Impressive time management and organisational skills.
• Excellent writing and communication skills.

Kinship are an equal opportunities employer. We warmly welcome applications from appropriately qualified people from all sections of the community and aim to promote diversity.

What we ll offer you

Kinship offers 30 days annual leave plus bank holidays (pro-rata for part-time) as well as a generous pension scheme. This fixed-term role is open to flexible working (school hours would be considered). We have an excellent wellbeing offer including the Employee Assistance Programme and clinical supervision. We will invest in your professional development with training and career development opportunities.

Kinship is committed to championing equality, diversity and inclusion. We believe our work is greatly enhanced by the varied backgrounds, experiences and views represented within our teams. We aim to create inclusive teams, celebrate differences and encourage everyone to join us and be their true self at work. We therefore encourage applications from anyone who fits our values, whatever their religion or belief, sex, gender identity, race, age, sexuality or disability and are actively seeking candidates that can bring real innovation and commitment to us.

This is a fantastic time to join a supportive and well-established team within an organisation with rapid growth ambitions. This role will be what you make it and we re looking for someone to seize this opportunity!

How to apply

Please apply via Charity Job with your CV and a cover letter of no more than 2 pages. Please include your notice period and earliest availability to start in your cover letter.

• Application opens: Friday 14 March
• Application deadline: Monday 31 March, 10 AM.
• First interview: Online - starting from Thursday 24 March
• Second interview: In person - starting from Monday 31 March

Some tips for your application:

• Make sure you ve read the job description and the essential requirements make sure your answer reflects those points in the requirements very clearly.

• Really tell us why you want to work for Kinship. We re interested in working with people who share our values. You can read about our values above.

• Keep your response clear use bullet points and short paragraphs if that helps. It will help the recruitment team to focus on your answer.

• Don t go over 2 pages on your covering letter.

• Please do not use AI tools like ChatGPT to produce your answers. We use software to check and your application will be rejected if you do.

We will shortlist for this role on a rolling basis, so encourage you to apply as soon as possible.

Kinship reserves the right to close a recruitment campaign earlier than the advertised where we have received sufficient applications.