Job Description

Community Links is a social action charity, rooted in east London and nationally focused. It has almost 40 years' experience working in one of the most deprived, diverse and vibrant areas in the country. Our Vision is for confident communities ready to create and seize opportunities. Our Mission is to generate change in the communities of east London by ensuring access to all forms of opportunity: learning, skills, employment and social networks. 

We passionately believe in the importance of taking the learning from Community Links’ long history of supporting people and delivering services directly to the heart of Government.  We also seek to understand and share the lessons about how policy is affecting people in deprived communities with politicians and civil servants in order to improve the lives of people in similar situations across the UK.

Your work will be crucial in turning our learning into tangible policy change and ensuring we continue to have an influential national voice.  Working closely with colleagues from across Community Links you will be helping to determine our policy goals and how best to achieve them.  You will work closely with the Head of Policy and Research to raise our profile and develop relationships with policy makers, partner organisations and the media.

The kind of day-to-day tasks you will be doing could include:

• Talking to colleagues in the advice team to understand what kinds of debt people are falling into;
• Running focus groups with long-term unemployed people to determine the best way to help them back in to work;
• Drafting a briefing on how to tackle overcrowded housing in Newham;
• Writing a blog on what the community centre of the future should look like; 
• Meeting civil servants to discuss our recommendations for how to improve the Work Programme;
• Briefing journalists about a forthcoming report on the future of the Jobcentre.

It is a demanding and challenging role that requires someone who is flexible, imaginative and dedicated to improving the lives of people in deprived communities.