Advocacy Manager

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Rethink Mental Illness is seeking an experienced Advocacy Manager to lead its Barnsley and County Durham advocacy services. This full-time, permanent role offers £37,406 and requires field-based travel across the area. You’ll deliver compliant, person-centred advocacy across statutory and non-statutory contracts, drive KPIs, and build a high-performing team of trainee and qualified advocates. The ideal candidate will be a qualified advocate with leadership experience, safeguarding knowledge, strong communication, and IT/reporting skills, plus the ability to manage change and risk. Tips for applying: tailor your CV to evidence KPI delivery, service improvement, stakeholder engagement, safeguarding, recruitment and development, and willingness to travel; show commitment to empowering people and to our values, diversity and inclusion.

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Advocacy Manager
Location: Field-based – Barnsley & County Durham
Contract Type: Full-time (35 hours) - Permanent
Salary: £37,406

Lead change. Empower voices. Make a real impact.
At Rethink Advocacy, we believe everyone deserves to have their voice heard.
We’re looking for an experienced and passionate Advocacy Manager to lead high-quality advocacy services across Barnsley and County Durham. This is an opportunity to drive meaningful change – not just for individuals, but across entire communities.
If you’re a strong leader who thrives on improving services, developing teams, and delivering impact, we’d love to hear from you.

About the role
As an Advocacy Manager, you’ll take overall responsibility for the delivery and performance of advocacy contracts in your area. You’ll lead from the front – supporting your team, driving quality, and ensuring people receive independent, person-centred advocacy that truly makes a difference.
You’ll work across a range of services, including statutory and non-statutory advocacy, supporting people to have their rights upheld and their voices heard.

What you’ll be doing
In this role, you will:
Lead and manage services
• Oversee contract delivery, ensuring services meet KPI targets and achieve positive outcomes
• Develop and deliver local service plans aligned to community needs
• Monitor performance, quality, and compliance with legal frameworks
Inspire and develop your team
• Manage the full employee lifecycle, including recruitment, development and performance
• Provide supervision, guidance and support to advocates
• Create a culture of openness, learning, and continuous improvement
Drive quality and innovation
• Ensure high standards across audits, reporting and case management
• Identify opportunities to improve and develop services
• Lead on action planning and continuous service improvement
Build relationships and partnerships
• Work collaboratively with stakeholders, professionals and partners
• Represent Rethink at external meetings and local forums
• Strengthen networks to enhance service impact
Ensure safe and effective delivery
• Oversee safeguarding, risk management and health & safety
• Manage incidents and complaints, embedding learning into practice
• Ensure robust systems, processes and compliance across services

About the services
You’ll oversee services including:
• Barnsley Advocacy Service – delivering a wide range of advocacy (e.g. IMCA, IMHA, Care Act, community advocacy)
• County Durham Specialist Mental Health Advocacy – supporting people in relation to mental health services
You’ll lead a team of trainee and qualified advocates, ensuring flexible and responsive support to meet local needs.

What we’re looking for
We’re looking for someone who is:
✔ A qualified advocate (who could be working towards additional remits)
✔ An experienced leader who can inspire and develop high-performing teams
✔ Confident managing performance, change and complex situations
✔ Organised, proactive, and able to prioritise competing demands
✔ A strong communicator with excellent interpersonal skills
✔ Knowledgeable about safeguarding and advocacy frameworks
✔ IT confident, with experience of systems and reporting
✔ Flexible and able to travel across the service area
Above all, you’ll be passionate about empowering people and improving lives through advocacy.

Why join Rethink?
• Lead services that create real, lasting impact
• Be part of a supportive and collaborative leadership team
• Shape the future of advocacy in your area
• Access ongoing development and learning opportunities
• Work in a values-driven organisation with people at its heart

Important information
• This role requires an Enhanced DBS check (Adults and Children)
• Regular travel across Barnsley and County Durham is required

Ready to apply?
If you’re ready to lead with purpose and help people have their voices heard when it matters most, we’d love to hear from you.
Apply today and be part of something meaningful.


Why Work With Rethink Mental Illness?
At Rethink Mental Illness, we believe that when you feel supported, you can make the biggest difference. That’s why we offer a range of benefits to help you thrive:
• Inclusive Culture: Join staff networks that champion diversity and inclusion.
• Wellbeing Support: Access our Wellbeing Hub, Employee Assistance Programme, and the Unmind mental health app.
• Recognition & Rewards: Enjoy discounts, cashback offers, and celebrate achievements through our PULSE platform.
• Flexible Working & Generous Leave: Starting at 25 days annual leave (plus bank holidays and your birthday off), with options to buy or sell extra days.
• Learning & Development: Grow your career with structured onboarding and training opportunities.
• Financial & Family Support: Contributory pension scheme, enhanced family leave, and travel benefits like season ticket loans and cycle-to-work schemes.
• Referral Bonus: Earn up to £300 for introducing someone to our team.


Diversity, Equity, Inclusion
Diversity is important to us, and we appreciate difference through difference, inclusiveness and belonging. It gives us a deeper understanding of the world, our society and the diverse communities we’re working with. By including everyone, we are able to draw on the unique experiences and expertise of our people to help shape and enrich our workplace and improve our services. One way we are doing is through our valued staff networks which play a critical and highly valued role in keeping us focused on creating a diverse, inclusive and engaged employer.  We recognise and support staff networks and support groups for our ethnically diverse and LGBTQIA+ colleagues. We are also proud to have been awarded Disability Confident Employer status and are a signatory to the Business in the Community Race at Work Charter.
We aim for our workforce to reflect the diversity of the communities we serve; for those who work for us to feel heard, valued and feel they belong; and for our work to help tackle wider mental health inequalities. We therefore actively encourage and welcome applications from everyone, including applicants with lived experience of mental illness, those who are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual and any other gender identity not expressed here (LGBTQIA+); people who are neurodiverse, have a health condition, or a disability or hidden disability and people from an ethnically diverse background - regardless of your age, religious or spiritual belief, sexual orientation, marital status, veteran status, pregnancy, political view or socio-economic status.

Becoming a truly anti-racist organisation
We have an ambition of become a truly anti-racist employer, campaigning organisation and service provider - and in our efforts to influence policy and wider societal factors impacting on mental health set out in our anti-racist statement . We have designed a multi-year anti-racist programme of work contained in our Race Equality Action Plan which demonstrates our intention to hold ourselves accountable and be judged on our progress on becoming a truly anti-racist organisation.