27/10/2026
We're recruiting!
Are you passionate about helping people grow in confidence, use their strengths and support others?
Do you believe that lived experience can become a powerful force for change?
Could you develop people, build connections and help create a stronger SEND community across Essex?
If so, we'd love to hear from you.
About Us
Families InFocus is an Essex charity supporting parents and carers of children and young people aged 0-25 with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
Our vision is a more inclusive society where children and young people with SEND can realise their potential.
Our approach is about more than helping families solve the problem immediately in front of them. We want parents to have trusted information and advice, build confidence and self-advocacy, develop connections with others and feel that they belong within a supportive SEND community.
About the Role
We're looking for an experienced, compassionate and organised Community Engagement Manager to help us take the next step in that journey.
This is an important role connecting our professional family support with our wider community.
You will help parents build confidence and connections, while developing a growing network of volunteers, peer supporters and Community Builders who can use their skills and lived experience to support others. This could include peer support, parent groups, telephone support, benefits-form support and our developing Parent Advocacy work.
This isn't volunteering for volunteering's sake.
It's about recognising the strengths that already exist within the SEND community and creating safe, supported opportunities for people to use them.
Not every parent will want to volunteer or support someone else, and that's not the expectation. But for those who do, we want to create a pathway where people can develop confidence, learn new skills, take on meaningful roles and potentially progress into community leadership, training or employment.
What You'll Be Doing
You'll take a lead role in:
• Fostering engagement: helping parents move from receiving support towards greater confidence, self-advocacy, connection and participation.
• Developing people: recruiting, welcoming, training, mentoring and supervising volunteers, peer supporters and Community Builders.
• Creating meaningful roles: matching people's skills, experience and aspirations to opportunities where they can genuinely make a difference.
• Building safe frontline capacity: developing volunteers who, with the right training, supervised practice and competency assessment, can contribute to Parent Advocacy, peer support, parent groups and other areas of our work.
• Building community: creating opportunities for parents to connect, participate, contribute and potentially lead.
• Supporting existing communities: developing relationships with parent groups and community organisations and identifying ways FiF volunteers and peer supporters can complement what already exists.
• Developing our internal community: helping staff, volunteers, peer supporters and people with lived experience feel part of one connected Families InFocus community.
• Demonstrating impact: helping us understand and evidence how our work builds trust, confidence, belonging and stronger SEND communities.
The emphasis on structured recruitment, supervised practice, competency development, progression and quality assurance reflects the stronger volunteer-development model developed for the role.
This Is Primarily an Office-Based Role
This is an important part of how we're designing the role.
You will be primarily based in our Chelmsford office, where you'll be accessible to volunteers and peer supporters who may be undertaking increasingly skilled frontline work and need regular supervision, mentoring, encouragement and support.
Much of your relationship-building with partners and communities can happen through Microsoft Teams, telephone and digital communication. Our Family Support Advisers and Senior Leadership Team will also provide face-to-face professional presence in the community, although there will be occasions when you'll attend meetings, groups or events where this adds real value.
So we're not looking for you to travel daily around the whole of Essex.
We're looking for someone who gets satisfaction from developing other people to succeed.
Who We're Looking For
You might come from volunteer development, community development, family support, advocacy, health, education, social care or another people-focused environment.
You may also bring lived experience of SEND.
What's particularly important is that you can:
• build trusting relationships with a wide range of people;
• coach, encourage and develop others;
• recruit, train, supervise and support people undertaking meaningful roles;
• recognise someone's strengths and help them develop;
• establish clear boundaries while remaining warm and approachable;
• manage safeguarding, confidentiality and appropriate escalation;
• work effectively alongside professional staff and community partners;
• organise multiple priorities and maintain good records;
• use feedback and evidence to keep improving what we do.
The role requires substantial experience of developing, supporting or leading volunteers, peer supporters or a comparable people-facing workforce, alongside experience of structured supervision and managing appropriate boundaries and safeguarding
Why Join Us?
You'll be joining Families InFocus at a point where we're developing a different way of thinking about community support.
We want to combine professional expertise with the knowledge, experience and capability that already exists amongst SEND parents and carers.
Your role will help turn that ambition into something practical:
Trusted support → Confidence → Connection → Participation → Contribution
For some people, that might mean feeling confident enough to join a parent group.
For another, it could mean learning to advocate more confidently for their child.
For someone else, it might eventually mean becoming a peer supporter, volunteer or Community Builder.
Your job will be to help create those opportunities, not prescribe the journey.
The Details
Role: Community Engagement Manager
Salary: £30,000-£35,000 FTE, depending on experience
Hours: 28-37 hours per week
Contract: Permanent
Location: Families InFocus office, Chelmsford, primarily office-based
Flexibility: Some evening/weekend working and occasional external attendance will be required.
How to Apply
To apply, please email [email protected] and we'll send you the full job description and application form.
We welcome applications from people with a wide range of professional and personal experiences who can demonstrate the skills and approach we're looking for.
