ID: 1747 Clinical Practice Lead
Relate

Salary: Starting at £48,000 FTE per annum, rising to £55,000 FTE per annum
(Pro Rata for part-time hours: £28,800 – £33,000 per annum)
Additional £480 FTE per year home-based allowance

Hours: 22.2 hours per week (Part-time)
- We offer flexible working arrangements, please see below for more details.

Location: Home-based with occasional national travel

Contract: Permanent

Family Action & this role:
At Family Action we support people through change, challenge or crisis. It’s what we’ve done for over 150 years. We protect children, support young people and adults and offer direct, practical help to families and communities.

We see first-hand the power of family to shape lives, for better or worse, so we speak up for the importance of family in national and local policymaking, amplify family voices and represent the changing needs of families in the UK today.

Relate, now part of Family Action and delivers high quality counselling and therapeutic services to thousands of people each year. Our focus is on excellence, inclusivity, and ensuring every client feels heard, valued, and respected. We embed our values – Can do, Excellence, Mutual Respect, and People Focus in everything we do.

We are now seeking an inspiring Clinical Practice Lead to shape the clinical heartbeat of Relate at a pivotal moment of growth and transformation.

About the Role
As Clinical Practice Lead, you will provide national clinical leadership for all Relate counselling services. You will ensure our practice is safe, inclusive, ethical and of consistently high quality, and that innovation and evidence drive everything we do.
You will lead our Clinical Supervisors, strengthen clinical governance frameworks, champion reflective and psychologically safe practice, and bring sector clinical insight into service design, workforce development and digital transformation.
This is a role for a confident, compassionate and visionary clinical leader who wants to shape the future of relationship therapy at national scale.

This role is for you if…
• You are energised by raising clinical standards and leading a culture of excellence.
• You believe in inclusive; evidence- informed practice shaped by client need
• You thrive when working across complex environments - operational, digital, strategic and clinical.
• You bring deep therapeutic expertise and can translate it into practical, scalable frameworks.
• You enjoy inspiring and developing others, from trainees to senior clinicians.

What You’ll Lead
(for full details, see the job description and person specification)
Clinical Excellence
• Setting the clinical standards and ethical frameworks that guide all Relate practice.
• Ensure safe, effective and evidence-informed therapy across a range of different platforms, including digital and face-to-face settings.
Clinical Governance & Quality
• Lead the clinical elements of our Quality Assurance Framework.
• Use data, insight and research to strengthen practice and outcomes.
Workforce Development
• Lead Clinical Supervisors and build our national CPD programme.
• Support recruitment, supervision, competency frameworks and placement pathways.
Innovation & Service Design
• Shape new clinical models, digital services and product development.
• Provide clinical leadership for transformation programmes.
Sector Leadership
• Represent Relate externally, influencing best practice and sector direction.

About You
You will bring:
• Accredited clinical membership with a recognised professional body (e.g. BACP, UKCP, NCPS, COSRT).
• Extensive post qualifying experience delivering therapy to individuals, couples and/or families.
• Proven experience providing clinical leadership and/or supervision across complex services.
• Strong understanding of safeguarding, risk and clinical governance.
• Ability to lead with credibility, compassion, courage and inclusivity.
• A commitment to data-informed practice, continuous improvement and reflective learning.

Benefits:
- an annual paid leave entitlement of 30 working days plus bank holidays pro-rata
- up to 6% matched-pension contributions
- flexible working arrangements and new starters have the right to make flexible working requests from day one of employment
- enhanced paid sick leave and paid family leave provisions
- eye care and winter flu jabs vouchers
- cycle to work scheme
- investing in your professional development with ongoing quality training and career development opportunities

We are a people focused, can-do organisation, which strives for excellence in all we do and operates with mutual respect.
To Apply: If you’re excited by this role and inspired to shape the future of professional training the therapy sector, apply now and lead a growing portfolio of impactful training programmes. If you meet 80% or more of the essential criteria, we would still encourage you to apply or get in touch with us for a conversation.

• Click the “Apply Now” link below and fill out our digital application form
• Closing Date: 12th April 2026 at 23:59

Interview date: TBC
Location: held on Microsoft Teams.
For direct queries or if you would like to discuss any aspect of the selection process or flexible working requests, please email: pippa.donovan@family-action.org.uk

Our commitment to Equality, Diversity & Inclusion:
We are happy to consider any reasonable adjustments that candidates may need during the recruitment process and you will be asked whether you require any adjustments if shortlisted for interview. We also make reasonable adjustments on the job, where required.

We are committed to Equality, Diversity & Inclusion in all that we do and welcome applications from all sections of the community. Intersectionality is important to us and we particularly welcome applications from ethnically diverse communities, LGBTQIA+ candidates and disabled candidates because we are committed to increasing the representation of these groups at Family Action. We know that greater diversity will lead to even greater results for families and children and strive for our workforce to be truly representative of the diverse communities we support.

We offer a guaranteed interview scheme for disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria for the role. For this vacancy, we are also applying positive action to improve the representation of people of colour in management roles at Family Action. As such, the guaranteed interview scheme is extended to applicants of colour who meet the minimum criteria.

To help remove financial barriers to working with us, we will reimburse travel costs if you are invited to attend an interview in person.

*Ordinarily Family Action appoints new starters at the starting point of the salary scale (with subsequent annual pay progression), unless you have experience that would justify appointment further up the salary scale or there are other exceptional reasons.