Strategic Communications Trustee for SEND & Families in England

We're strengthening our board and need a trustee with communications expertise to help us reach more families and tell our story better. If you work in comms or digital and care about SEND, we'd love to hear from you.

What difference will you make? Many of the families we exist to support don't know we're here, and we want to change that. At the same time, how we present ourselves to partners, commissioners and funders directly affects our ability to influence decisions that matter to those families. With your support, the board will be better equipped to make strategic decisions about our communications, assess what's working, and back our staff in developing their approach. You'll help us think about accessibility, tone and reach in a way that's grounded in professional expertise. The more effectively we communicate, the more families we reach, the stronger our partnerships, and the more weight our voice carries in the SEND system. That's the difference this role can make.

What are we looking for? We're looking for someone who cares about who we are and who we're trying to reach — not just someone who knows communications. The families we support face real challenges, and the way we talk about our work needs to reflect that. We want a trustee who brings both professional skill and genuine regard for the communities we serve. In terms of background, we need someone with substantive experience in communications, marketing, PR or digital. You'll understand how organisations build and maintain a presence across different channels, and be able to think strategically about messaging, audience and reach. If you've worked with community-facing or public‑benefit organisations, so much the better — the communication challenges are different from commercial settings, and familiarity with that territory helps.

The most important thing, though, is that you're a strategic thinker. This is not a hands‑on delivery role. Our staff manage our day‑to‑day communications, and what they need from the board isn't someone to do the work — it's someone who can help the organisation govern communications well. That means asking good questions, recognising what strong practice looks like, and helping the board make confident decisions in this space.

Accessibility matters a great deal to us. Our community includes people who face significant barriers — to information, to services, to feeling heard. We'd particularly welcome someone who thinks carefully about inclusive and accessible communication, whether that's through professional experience or personal understanding. You'll need to be comfortable working collaboratively and advising without always being the decision‑maker. The best communications trustees are people who can offer a perspective clearly, hold it lightly, and trust others to take it forward. If that sounds like you, we'd love to talk.

Any familiarity with the SEND sector or experience communicating with or for disabled people and carers would be a real bonus, though it's not a requirement. We would particularly welcome applications from parent carers — people with lived experience of navigating the SEND system with their child or young person. It isn't a requirement, but it matters to us that our board reflects the community we serve and that perspectives are genuinely valued around our table. No previous trustee experience is needed. We'll provide a full induction and a warm welcome to a board that's actively building for the future.

What will you be doing? Wigan Parent Carer Forum has a small board of trustees and employs a dedicated staff team who deliver our work day to day. We are currently in an active period of trustee recruitment, working to build a board with the range of expertise we need, and we want to strengthen communications at the board level. Reaching the families who need us and being visible and credible to the partners, commissioners and funders we work with matters enormously to what we can achieve. Our staff manage our communications day to day, but the board doesn't currently have dedicated expertise to provide strategic oversight in this area. That means we can sometimes lack confidence in making decisions about our digital presence, messaging, and how we present ourselves to different audiences.

As our communications trustee, you'll be the board's lead on this. You'll help us think clearly about our communications strategy, who we're trying to reach, whether our current approach is working, and where we should invest our limited capacity. You'll act as a sounding board for staff on significant communications decisions and help the board ask the right questions when this comes up in strategy discussions. This is an advisory and governance role, not a hands‑on delivery role. We're not looking for someone to run our social media; we want someone who can help the board govern communications effectively and support staff in doing their best work.

Beyond your specialism, you'll contribute fully as a trustee, joining board meetings, engaging with strategic decisions, and helping to shape the forum's direction. We're at an interesting point in our development, investing in governance and building for the future. A trustee who can help us communicate our work more effectively is part of that.