Regional Youth Voice & Influence Lead Midlands

Regional Youth Voice & Influence Lead (Midlands)

The voices of young people matter. This role exists to make sure they shape what happens next.

We're looking for a passionate, values-driven person who believes that young people should do more than access services—they should help influence and improve them.

As our Regional Youth Voice & Influence Lead, you'll work across the Midlands, building meaningful relationships with young people, creating opportunities for them to share their experiences, and ensuring their perspectives help shape how substance use services are developed and delivered.

This is a unique opportunity to spend your time doing what many youth professionals care most about: listening, understanding, advocating and creating change.

We're looking for someone who:

• Believes wholeheartedly in the value of young people's voices.
• Can build trust and engage authentically with diverse groups of young people.
• Sees participation as more than a consultation exercise.
• Can turn young people's experiences into powerful insight and influence.
• Is passionate about making services more responsive, accessible and effective.

You'll have the privilege of hearing young people's stories, understanding what matters to them, and helping ensure those voices are reflected in decisions that affect their lives.

If you're motivated by purpose, driven by social impact and committed to championing young people, we'd love to hear from you.

Help us make sure young people's voices are not only heard—but genuinely influential.

Location: The successful candidate will be based from one of our services in the Midlands

with regular national travel across the Midlands.

Hours: Full time, 37.5 hours per week*.

*Please note: Full-time hours at Change Grow Live are 37.5 hours per week. For part-time roles, the salary and any associated payments will be pro rata based on contracted hours.

A role with real influence

This isn't a traditional quality or engagement role.

You'll spend time listening to young people, understanding their experiences and identifying what works well, what doesn't and what needs to change. Working alongside local teams while remaining independent from day-to-day service delivery, you'll ensure young people's voices remain at the heart of decision-making.

Whether you're facilitating creative consultation sessions, presenting themes to commissioners or supporting services to embed co-production, you'll help make sure young people's experiences lead to lasting improvements across the region.

What you'll be doing

You'll:

• Design creative, inclusive and meaningful ways to engage with young people across the Midlands.
• Build trusted relationships with young people accessing services, as well as those who may not yet know support is available.
• Gather honest feedback about barriers, experiences and opportunities for improvement.
• Turn lived experience into clear recommendations that influence service quality and strategic decision-making.
• Work with commissioners, partners and local teams to embed co-production into everyday practice.
• Identify regional themes and share learning that strengthens services across multiple local authorities.
• Produce engaging reports that ensure young people's voices are heard clearly and authentically.

Who we're looking for

You'll be someone who genuinely believes that young people should help shape the services designed to support them.

You might come from youth work, substance misuse, safeguarding, participation, quality improvement or another related field—but above all, you'll know how to build trust, create meaningful conversations and turn insight into action.

You'll bring experience of working directly with young people, excellent communication skills and the confidence to influence people at every level, from frontline practitioners to commissioners.

If you're curious, collaborative and passionate about improving services through co-production, we'd love to hear from you.

We want to get to know you, not an AI tool. Please make sure your application is written in your own words and genuinely reflects your skills, experience and motivation.

Direct applications only — we will not be engaging agencies for this vacancy.

We reserve the right to close the vacancy early if we receive a high number of applications, so we encourage you to apply as soon as possible.

Please note: This role is not eligible for visa sponsorship. Applicants must already have the right to work in the UK at the time of application. For applicants with time-limited visas, unfortunately, we are unable to support new visa applications or extensions