Work for Think Ahead

• Salary: £46,920 or £49,980 (London based)
• Contract: 6 to 9-month fixed term contract
• Working pattern: Full time, 37.5 hours a week
• Location: Hybrid/homeworking. Due to travel across London and South East, you will be based in London or Southeast. You’ll be expected to attend our London office, in Chancery Lane/Farringdon or London venue at least 2 days a month, with flexibility.
• Closing date: 5pm, Monday 1 December 2025
• Interview dates: Wednesday 10 and Friday 12th December 2025

Download our Practice Specialist job pack

We are looking for a dynamic and highly motivated professional to join our Practice Specialist team, working within our Programme team.

Practice Specialists play a crucial role in preparing Think Ahead participants to become outstanding social workers. This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced social worker to maintain links with frontline practice and practice education, with development opportunities for teaching delivery, and coaching and mentoring others. Each Practice Specialist will have responsibility for a number of Think Ahead units (groups of 4-6 participants based in the same organisation), ensuring that participants receive an outstanding practice learning experience, and that there is effective delivery of our innovative curriculum in the practice environment provided by the NHS Trusts and Local Authorities that we partner with.

As Practice Specialist you will:

• Manage the implementation of the programme across host organisations ensuring quality placements and that the academic and practice components are brought together effectively. This will include visiting units of participants on placement, and virtually unit meetings.
• Support development of CSW’s through regular coaching, supervision and training.
• Establish strong relationships with all relevant key contacts across our partner NHS trust and local authorities, holding regular meetings to quality assure the programme and develop our partnerships.
• Provide specialist professional social work expertise to the Think Ahead team bringing experience and knowledge of frontline practice.

Who we’re looking for

The ideal candidate will be an experienced social worker and practice educator, that has experience of working within mental health and has a proven record of accomplishment of developing and supporting social workers. We are also looking for someone with experience and confidence in delivering training and is willing and motivated to get involved in this evolving area of the charity.

What we can offer you

We offer excellent employee benefits, including generous annual leave entitlement (28 days) plus additional office closure over Christmas, enhanced family-friendly leave, flexible working around our core hours of 10am to 4pm, a matched pension scheme with up to 7% employer contributions, an employee assistance programme and more.

How to apply 

Please provide a CV and a supporting statement (max 2 pages) outlining your fit for the role based on the person specification in the candidate pack and email these to hr@thinkahead.org. Please also fill in our equality and diversity monitoring form.

We will use both the CV and the supporting statement to enable us to shortlist for interview. Unfortunately, we will not be able to consider any applications that do not address how the candidate meets the person specification in the supporting statement.

Download our Practice Specialist job pack

• Hybrid until March with one or two days required in the office in Farringdon. (Think Ahead’s hybrid working model is currently under review).

• Transparent pay structure.
• Auto-enrolment in our Aviva pension scheme.
• Up to 7% employer contributions dependent on matched contribution from employee.

• Enhanced occupational maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave policies and time off for IVF/fertility appointments.

• 28 days annual leave per annum plus UK bank holidays (pro-rata for part-time employees).
• Entitlement rising to 29 days (pro-rata for part-time staff) after three years’ service.
• Office closure between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day.
• Opportunity to carry over up to five days (pro rata for part-time employees) into the following annual leave year.
• Support for external volunteering including two paid volunteering days.

• Access to mental health first aiders.
• Staff away days.
• Access to an employee assistance programme through Health Assured and We Care.

• Hybrid working environment, with expectation staff will be in the office roughly one to two days per week.
• Core hours of 10.00am to 4.00pm to enable flexibility within the workday to accommodate individual preferences.
• Provision of equipment needed to work comfortably at home and on the move.
• Flexible working options to support those with caring responsibilities.

• Free eye test every two years and contribution towards cost of any glasses required due to work.
• Generous paid sick leave based on service.
• Life assurance – flat £100k benefit.

We are committed to continuously improving our recruitment processes to make them as inclusive as possible.

We always do our best to accommodate reasonable adjustments where they are needed to participate fully in the recruitment process and will work with you to find out how we can best support you.

Our cross-organisational equality, diversity and inclusion action group leads on recommending improvements in this area.

Any staff member is welcome to join the group.

We have made a number of other commitments including being a living wage employer and a commitment to being a disability confident employer.

We are also a member of the Employer’s Network for Equality and Inclusion.