Advertised from 29 October 2025

Role

About Simon Community Scotland

People are at the heart of who we are and what we do. Day-by-day, person-to-person, we tailor what we offer to what people need. We’re here to provide consistent, friendly and informed support so that people can explore options and take ‘the next step’ towards their future. We welcome people with a wide range of skills and experiences to our team – including those who have lived through homelessness. To make a difference we need to work flexibly, with everyday-leadership, humour and a ‘can do’ spirit. We want to make it easy, make it right, and make it happen – not only for the people we support, but also for each other. We care for and support each other regardless of our role, service or location. We want people who share these values to join us and become a part of the Simon Community Scotland team.

Job Specific Description

This is an exciting leadership opportunity to bring together two pioneering and transformative services working with women experiencing homelessness in Glasgow: the newly developed Soft Edges and the established Connect Hub.

Soft Edges is a multi-agency government funded project, with Simon Community Scotland leading on the operational delivery, the aim of the service is to connect with women who have experienced barriers to accessing support for a number of reasons.

Soft Edges will be a co-produced and trauma-informed service built in partnership with women, supporting women that services struggle to reach. The Connect Hub offers a community based, drop-in model that prioritises flexibility, safety, and meaningful engagement and support alongside women experiencing homelessness in Glasgow City Centre.

A key focus of this role in the first six months will be to lead the co-design of the Soft Edges service alongside women with lived and living experience. This includes collaboratively shaping the full service offer - from outreach and housing pathways to staffing structures, job roles, and operational design. The successful candidate will guide an inclusive, creative and empowering design process that ensures the resulting service is grounded in the real needs, strengths, and aspirations of women that traditional systems and structures have historically struggled to serve.

Alongside this, you will provide strategic leadership for the Connect Hub, an established four-day-a-week community service for women, and manage a skilled multidisciplinary team across both services. You'll work in partnership with clinical psychology and partner agencies to deliver responsive, trauma-informed and relational support that creates meaningful change in women's lives and challenges systemic barriers.

This role requires a compassionate and strategic leader who can build trusting relationships, lead with compassion, support staff wellbeing, and champion co-production, all while ensuring services are sustainable, integrated, and impactful

Key Responsibilities

Strategic and Service Leadership 

Lead the co-design phase of the Soft Edges service, working alongside women to define:

• The service offer and model of support
• Team structure and job roles
• Values, principles and practice approach
• Service spaces and operational approaches
• Ensure lived and living experience drives every aspect of the Soft Edges design, embedding trauma-informed values from day one.
• Sharing and developing the service alongside broader strategic partners across Health and Social Care Partnership
• Translate the co-design outcomes into a fully developed, operationally ready service for launch after the initial six-month design phase.
• Ensure services remain aligned with trauma informed and co-production values.
• Provide ongoing operational leadership of the Connect Hub, ensuring it remains a responsive, trauma-informed, and accessible service for women in Glasgow.

Team Leadership

• Provide direct line management to the Soft Edges and Connect Hub team, and leadership support to the Practitioner Psychologist and Assistant Psychologist.
• Work in close partnership with the Clinical Psychologist and Head of Service to embed psychologically-informed environments (PIE) and trauma-informed care throughout the service.
• Ensure the recruitment and onboarding of new team members for Soft Edges aligns with co-designed values and role profiles.
• Ensure all staff are supported through supervision, coaching, and reflective practice, in collaboration with psychology colleagues.
• Actively promote wellbeing, emotional safety, and professional growth within staff teams.
• Model compassionate and values-based leadership in all relationships and decisions.

Partnership and System Engagement

• Build strong and strategic relationships across sectors (e.g. housing, health, VAWG, justice, social work, mental health) to improve pathways and systems of care for women.
• Represent the services and Simon Community Scotland in local forums and multi-agency settings.
• Champion systems change through storytelling, influence, and collaborative working, informed by women's lived experience, creating space for women to shape service design. Support team members to have regular care meetings to ensure multiagency working alongside women - steering the need for stronger communication across both public and third sector organisations involved in a women's care.

Budget and Resource Management

• Oversee and manage grant funded budgets across both services, ensuring accountability, transparency and delivery.
• Lead on securing additional funding and income generation opportunities, in collaboration with internal teams.
• Maintain clear and accessible reporting to funders, commissioners and stakeholders.

Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning

• Oversee service monitoring and evaluation processes that are participatory, woman-centred, and deliver on outcomes for women.
• Collaborate with the psychology team and research partners to capture and share learning, impact and insight.
• Embed continuous improvement through learning reviews, co-production forums, and meaningful feedback loops.

Our Values & Approach

All SCS employees are expected to demonstrate the following values in their work:

• Warmth and Regard
• Recognising and valuing everyone
• Treating people with kindness, dignity and respect
• Acting with compassion
• Showing warmth and welcome to everyone
• Taking difficult decisions sensitively and with due regard to others
• Taking a calm, professional and intelligent approach to stigma

Inclusion and Participation

• Encouraging the participation and inclusion of people we support
• Exploring choices and options with people we support or fellow colleagues
• Making things easy for others
• Embracing technology in delivering your role
• Supporting clients, staff and volunteers to become digitally included

Personalised and Creative

• Innovation and creativity
• Helping to find solutions that are a good fit for someone, irrespective of who they are or the problem they have
• When someone isn’t at their best, quickly recognising there’s probably something else. going on, and finding ways to respond with care

Supportive and Ambitious

• Helping to bring hope through our words and actions
• Helping to build trust
• Being supportive and showing care

Partnership and Collaboration

• Fostering positive relationships with our partners
• Building team togetherness and collaboration
• Fostering a positive problem-solving vibe

Leadership and Learning

• Making things happen
• Motivating and inspiring others
• Taking time to reflect on what’s working and what isn’t
• Taking care of our ‘places and spaces’ so they feel tidy and welcoming
• Asking for help and learning to do things better
• Playing an active role in our social media strategy

Application notes

To apply, and for more information, please visit our website.

Closing Date: 12 November, 2025