News

Job title: Programme manager.

Who's doing it? Jane Humphries.

Where? Cumbria Children's Fund.

Job description: To ensure the Children's Fund in Cumbria is a catalyst for change, contributing ideas and developing partnerships with others working towards a model of integrated children's services.

Skills/qualifications needed: Planning, problem-solving, negotiating, an aptitude for working in partnerships and experience of working with children.

What's good about the job? Contact with people working to improve the lot of children. Visiting our funded projects and seeing the difference we're making is the icing on the cake.

What's bad about the job? Bureaucracy is inevitable when we're distributing taxpayers' money but we try to keep it to a minimum for project staff. Constant change is a challenge, but we are used to that.

Pay: National Joint Council scale point 46: £30-£35,000.

What's the job like? The Children's Fund focuses on preventive projects. We work with statutory, voluntary and community organisations to generate practical support for five to 13 year olds and their families. In Cumbria we have seven staff working with and supporting 40 projects. I am involved in planning and reviewing progress; commissioning the right services; checking projects are delivering improvements for children; consulting other bodies; and making sure money comes in and is well spent. A key area is our work on common assessment, developing ways to gather information on children in a standard way. Some families may have to give the same information to half a dozen agencies before they receive any help. We want to simplify this so agencies can provide better help, more quickly. We hope the results of this work will be fed into national developments.