In-person in Slovakia: Public Finance for Children (PF4C) Consultant (60 working days; with travel as needed) – UNICEF Slovakia Refugee Response Office (RRO)

UNICEF Slovakia Refugee Response Office (RRO) is looking for a qualified Public Finance for Children (PF4C) Consultant to strengthen the integration of child-related local social services for refugees, migrant children and
caregivers (possibly for other vulnerable groups) in the 2025 budget formulation process.

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, care.

Purpose of Activity/Assignment

The objective of this workstream is therefore initiating public finance assessments of selected municipalities, to strengthen the integration of child-related local social services for refugees, migrant children and caregivers (possibly for other vulnerable groups) in the 2025 budget formulation process.

Background

UNICEF’s Refugee Response

Since the beginning of the emergency response, the UNICEF Refugee Response Office (RRO) in the Slovak Republic has included a local approach to programming in most of its interventions.

As the emergency response continues, the RRO’s focus has gradually shifted into transitioning emergency programmes to public social services, under local authorities’ coordination, with UNICEF support extending to technical assistance and capacity building.

The following interventions are lining up for 2024:

• A multi-country capacity building programme, in partnership with Eurocities (third phase) – covering 10 cities in Slovakia, Poland and Romania – aimed at facilitating the sustainability and up-scaling of social innovation projects, by strengthening the governance and budgetary arrangements. This is structured on the 4 operational objectives, which are: diagnosis, capacity building (in-person training), development of an action plan (through mentorship), policy development). The estimated start and duration is from June to August 2024.
• A multi-country TSI (Technical Support Instrument) that aims to improve access to quality and inclusive services for children and caregivers with refugee and migrant backgrounds, moving forward from an emergency approach to long-term inclusion strategies. Covering 3 countries, Slovakia is represented in the programme with the cities of Bratislava and Nitra. Among other things, the work with the municipalities will focus on developing action plans (including financing) to strategies for the inclusion of refugees and migrants. The TIS is most likely to be signed by the end of June 2024.

In anticipation and in preparation for these, the Slovak Republic’s RRO and the Regional Office (ECARO) intend to provide a country-specific technical assistance, focused on local governance and public finance aspects, to a total of 5 (2 + 3) municipalities.

The rationale for this includes:

• The relevance of local governance for the provision of child-related services.
• The interest, openness, and responsiveness of local authorities, in the agenda to improve child-related services at local level.
• The timeline of the 2025 budget formulation process.
• The value, in terms of best practices, that this portion of work can represent for all municipalities in Slovakia.

Expected Results

1. Assess the budget allocation and spending for locally provided social services for children, per each municipality. Please make sure enough granularity is provide for:

a. The package of services – which should be the same in the 5 municipalities, or at least comparable; with detail of services that cover refugee children. 
b. The funding sources – in particular, whether the allocations were made from national or local budgets; whether public or private (if possible); whether domestic or external; with detail of funding sources that are earmarked for refugee children. 
c. The changes over time – to understand whether the services and the budget behind those has evolved in the last 3 fiscal years; especially the extent to which the services and the budgets behind have evolved to cover refugee children.

2. Highlight the “gaps”: situations where refugee children are not included in locally provided social services:

a. Identify which services are covering equally and unequally; amongst the latter, whether a legal/procedural impediment exist.
b. To the extent possible, identify the beneficiaries’ gap.
c. To the extent possible, identify the funding gap.

3. Provide recommendations to gradually increase the coverage of locally provided social services for children for the upcoming 2025 budget formulation process, to each municipality.

Scope of Work

The assignment is country-specific, in 5 municipalities (Bratislava, Nitra, Košice, Prešov and Trnava) of the Slovak Republic.

The consultant will conduct the following tasks:

• With the RRO support, establish a relationship with each municipality; identify the most relevant and appropriate stakeholders to cover for all the areas required by this workstream.
• If necessary, create a coordination mechanism – such as a reference group (RG) – taking in consideration the different roles and responsibilities required to achieve the expected results, ensuring a balanced representation of planning and finance, and social services. If required, support with early connections to the RG and with the partner Eurocities, for the project mentioned above.
• Discuss and identify the data requirements, and submit requests to obtain the data through the reference group.
• Conduct a budget analysis, with the necessary level of granularity, to understand the patter of social spending; covering both allocations and possibly expenditure; the financing flows and funding gap, including both national and local levels; to the extent possible, making use of the budget classifiers available, and highlighting the issues of relevance for the emergency-related work; present the results of the analyses.
• Organize and coordinate multi-stakeholder local planning meetings, with the reference groups (possibly, this is one single activity with all the municipalities); discuss the prioritizations, and the options to enhance/improve social service provisions in the upcoming year; scan/map the funding gap and financing options.
• In consideration of the mapping of financing flows, and as a result of the planning process, the consultant should provide a statement on the appropriateness of the current “municipal funding formula”, to address priority child needs. Eventually, it should express recommendations for both national and local governments to improve its designs, working on adjusting the parameters and simulating the results for the 5 municipalities.
• Produce a succinct financing strategy covering the years 2025-27.
• Support the elaboration of the local plan and budget; consider tagging, eg identifying cross-budgetary items that address the needs of specific groups of population, eg children with disabilities, migrant children, etc.
• Support the communication and advocacy team by providing a short and non-technical description of the work conducted. Develop a 5-6 pp. case-study to be selected with UNICEF team, amongst success stories, for publication and dissemination.

Work Assignment Overview

Tasks / Milestone	Deliverables / Outputs	Timeline / Deadline
Inception report and work-plan	Report and workplan	5 working days
A report covering the assessment of budget allocations and spending on local social services in 5 municipalities. The report would include a case-study, featuring one success story in the integration of emergency programmes for refugee children.	Assessment report, and case-study	20 working days
A report covering the gaps in either the services, the coverage and/or the budgets, for the 5 municipalities. The report includes recommendations for each municipality, and proposes actions with grades of feasibility (eg what is required to make it) to improve service provision for refugee children in the upcoming 2025 budget formulation process	Gap-report and recommendations	25 working days
Presentation of the recommendations to the 2025 planning taskforce in each municipality, with suggestion of prioritised actions – feedback produced on the deliberations.	Presentation and feedback	10 working days

Estimated Duration of the Contract

60 working days between May and July 2024.

Consultant’s Work Place and Official Travel

The Consultant will be based in Bratislava.

As part of this assignment, some local and international travels are foreseen. The consultant will arrange her/his travel as and when they take place, and related costs will be reimbursed per UNICEF travel policy.

Travel Clause

• All UNICEF rules and regulations related to travel of Consultants apply.
• All travels shall be undertaken only upon the prior written approval by UNICEF.
• The consultant must be fit to travel, be in a possession of the valid UN BSAFE certificate, obligatory inoculation(s) and have a valid own travel/medical insurance and an immunization/vaccination card.

Estimated Cost of the Consultancy & Payment Schedule

Payment will be made on submission of an invoice and satisfactory completion of the above-mentioned deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold all or a portion of payment if performance is unsatisfactory, if work/outputs are incomplete, not delivered or for failure to meet deadlines. All materials developed will remain the copyright of UNICEF and UNICEF will be free to adapt and modify them in the future.

Please submit a professional fee (in USD) based on 60 working days to undertake this assignment, without travel fees as these will be reimbursed as and when they take place.

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

• Master’s degree in economics, public policies, governance – or related fields
• Seven (7) years of relevant working experience in public policies in social sectors, public economics, public financial management,
  planning and budgeting – as per CV
• At least three (3) years of relevant working experience in conducting or supervising budget analyses, costing, financing strategies or resource mobilization plans – based on evidence of these works submitted in the application process.
• Familiarity with UNICEF’s work in Public Financial Management (PF4C), the CRC, SDGs for children.
• Previous experience of working with UNICEF or other UN agencies – considered an advantage.
• Experience in project management – considered an advantage.
• Previous experience of working on assignments with the public administration in the Europe and Central Asia Region (ECAR); experience with Ministries supervising local authorities, and with local authorities such as municipalities – considered an asset.
• Fluency in English. Knowledge of Slovak is considered an asset.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s core values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS), and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results.

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most marginalized children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks:

Please include a full CV and Cover Letter in your application. Additionally, indicate your availability and professional fee (in USD) to undertake the terms of reference above. Applications submitted without a professional fee will not be considered. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment.