Child Protection Specialist

Ethiopia is situated in the Horn of Africa and is the second most populous country on the continent with an estimated population of 115 million. It borders six African countries: Djibouti, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan, and covers 1,104,300 square kilometers. Approximately 85 percent of the population lives in rural areas. Ethiopia represents a melting pot of ancient cultures with Middle Eastern and African cultures evident in the religious, ethnic, and language composition of its people.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Support strengthening coordination internally within UNICEF between Child Protection, Education and Health sections and externally strengthen coordination and collaboration between ministries of Education, Health, Women and Social Affairs, Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI) for system strengthening and among other key UN and NGO including through MHPSS Technical Working Group. The incumbent will also support coordination between UNICEF CO, regional office, and headquarters on MHPSS.
• Support capacity development of professional including through institutionalizing MHPSS training curriculum for workforce in social welfare, health, and education sectors.
• Support the Rapid Deployment Model, which includes a roster of MHPSS professionals assigned to work in emergency areas or other locations with critical MHPSS service gaps.
• Support strengthening of MHPSS in emergencies to meet UNICEF’s core commitments for children, including quality assurance of MHPSS material used by partners.
• Support ensuring a cross-sectoral approach to case management. This includes review and inputs to the sector-specific capacity-building materials/sector and identifies strategies to help ensure linkages between MHPSS and case management in health, education, and child protection.
• Identify target groups and existing evidence from across the three sectors and counterparts to develop a strategy to roll out focused advocacy messages on MHPSS to (a) raise awareness on mental health and psychosocial well-being across education, child protection and health sectors; (b) to strengthen self-care and childcare, and care-seeking behaviours of the target audience, and (c) reduce stigma for people with mental health conditions.
• Strengthen knowledge management and development and improvement of monitoring and evaluation systems to better measure the impact of our MHPSS interventions.
• Any other MHPSS strengthening activities related to advancing MHPSS across child protection, health, nutrition, and education systems in the above activities in consultation with the concerned supervisor, Chiefs, and technical specialists.
• Programme management, monitoring and quality control of results.

• Contribute to planning and reporting functions of the Child Protection Team, including development and monitoring of annual workplans.
• Contribute to drafting of funding allocations, ensure timely fund disbursement to partners and proper utilization as per plans, reporting and liquidation of resources.
• Monitor programs/projects to assess progress, identify bottlenecks and potential problems and take timely decisions to resolve issues and/or refer to relevant officials for timely resolution.
• Serves as section focal point on MHPSS issues for children including in respect of legal reform for child protection, and migration.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have:

The following minimum requirements:

Education:

• Master’s degree in social sciences, psychology, international development, public health, or similar relevant discipline. Two additional years of relevant work experience may be accepted in lieu of a master’s degree.

Work Experience:

• At least 5 years of MHPSS programming, including in humanitarian contexts.
• Solid knowledge and experience in child protection programming, including in humanitarian contexts.
• Solid knowledge and understanding of health, education, and child protection, including social work systems, humanitarian principles, child safeguarding measures and established international standards on mental health and psychosocial support for children, including adolescents.
• Strong coordination, organisational, relationship building and facilitation skills, face-to-face or remotely, with diverse stakeholders involving senior government, UN and NGO/INGO and academics.
• Demonstrated experience with multi-sectoral programme design and knowledge management, including remote coordination.
• Comfortable to work independently while coordinating closely with different teams.t specific work experiences required).

Language  requirements:

• Fluency in English both oral and written is required.
• Excellent analytical, communication, writing and editorial skills in English.
• Proficiency in an additional official United Nations language is an asset

Source: https://jobs.unicef.org/cw/en-us/job/570859