Job Description

About Nightline Association

Nightlines provide an anonymous and confidential listening and information service, run by students for students at their university. They work to improve student mental health and wellbeing and are open at night when no other university welfare services are available. Nightline services now cover over 100 universities and colleges, or over 1.8 million students, across the UK and Ireland thanks to an incredible team of over 2,100 trained student volunteers.

The Nightline Association is the registered charity that supports, promotes and develops Nightlines. Nightline Association is run entirely by volunteers, who get to play a hands on operational and strategic role in the running of a national charity. By volunteering for the Nightline Association you will not only gain more awareness of the work of the Association and the charity sector, you will also gain transferable skills and make new friends.

Role Description

Your primary responsibility is to support the ongoing development of the Good Practice Guidelines (GPGs) by providing expertise in legislation and legal direction relating to charities and helplines.

The GPGs highlight the key aspects of running a Nightline service and enable Nightlines to check that they are operating according to accepted standards of good practice and legal compliance. They exist to support Nightlines to run their service legally, safely and with duty of care to callers and volunteers. To become accredited under the GPGs, Nightlines need to complete workbooks on different aspects of running a Nightline service. This is to ensure that basic standards are met and that Nightlines have fully considered and have made plans for every eventuality that they may face.

You will be required to review the GPGs periodically to ensure that they remain consistent with legal and regulatory changes that impact Helplines. Working with the Quality Assurance Team Lead and Head of Development, you will recommend areas for review and improvement and collaborate in drafting new rules for Nightline’s for inclusion in the GPGs. 

You will sit within the Quality Assurance Team, whose role is to both uphold high-quality service provision from Nightline’s, support them in maintaining these standards, and continuously drive improvement in the quality of service Nightline’s offer. Your line manager will be the Team Lead. The team sits within the Development department. 

Duties and Responsibilities

• Review the legal landscape on an ongoing basis for changing laws and regulations that will impact Nightlines
• Proactively flag sections of the GPG that need to be reviewed in light of incomings legal changes and developments
• Recommend changes to GPG sections in line with incoming legal changes
• Work with the GPG Team Lead and Head of Development to draft amendments to the GPG.
• Provide guidance to Nightlines who have queries regarding areas of legal responsibility (responding within 28 days)
• Regularly check emails
• Attendance of regular departmental and team meetings
• Attendance of Nightline Association away days every three months
• Representing the GPG team at regional and national conferences held by Nightline Association and leading/contributing to a session where appropriate. 

Skills and Experience

Essential Experience

• Expertise in legal requirements relating to charities and helplines, including but not limited to areas regarding data protection, confidentiality and safeguarding
• Qualified solicitor
• Good standard of written English
• Highly developed organisational skills
• Ability to work independently and manage own workload
• IT Skills sufficient to use Google Docs and Gmail
• Ability to communicate via e-mail in an approachable and professional manner
• Experience working with charities, ideally helplines

Desirable Expeirence

• Understand the various ways in which a Nightline can operate and that no Nightline is the same 
• Ability to prepare and deliver a session at a conference 
• Connections within the legal sector 
• Experience of working with Nightlines or volunteering with a Nightline

Commitment

Whilst how much time you commit to your role at the Nightline Association is largely down to you, we usually expect volunteers to commit an average of one to two hours a week. However, we would also like to stress that this is very much a guide and that volunteers are by no means obliged to commit that amount of time every single week. 

You would be expected to attend online team meetings roughly once a month, and to keep up to date with your emails and team messages. The Nightline Association also has three away days each year which you are encouraged to attend when you can.