Job Description

Child Protection Technical Advisor Consultant

Location: Global (remote with potential for travel)

Supervisor: Director of Program Quality, Growth and Innovation

Apply by: September 28, 2022

Contract duration: 6 months, full-time (40 hours/week), beginning October 24, 2022

Organizational Background: Heartland Alliance International (HAI) is a service-based human rights organization headquartered in Chicago whose mission is to secure the rights and well-being of marginalized people and communities. HAI envisions a world in which those whose rights have been violated are safe and empowered to actively engage in their communities and be at the forefront of social change. HAI specializes in two core program areas: trauma-informed mental health and access to justice, while taking a human rights approach and integrating a progressive gender analysis into all of its programming including its expansive HIV/AIDS work with key populations.

Summary: The Child Protection Technical Advisor will provide technical support on child protection issues to HAI programs globally. She/he will collaborate with other HAI technical advisors to carefully assess programmatic needs, further develop HAI’s child protection standards and tools, strengthen the capacity of HAI staff and local partners, improve legal protections, and expand access to a range of protection and social services for children and adolescents in the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America.

The Child Protection Technical Advisor will work closely with the HQ Program Quality Team and in-country technical and program staff to assure that child protection interventions are fully integrated into ongoing gender-based violence, mental health, access to justice, and education programming. In particular, the Child Protection Technical Advisor will support juvenile justice and child MHPSS initiatives. The Technical Advisor reports to the Director of Program Quality, Growth and Innovation. This position can be based globally (EU countries desirable) and will work primarily remotely with international travel.

Tasks:

• Provide child protection technical support to country programs in coordination with other Technical Team members, and regional staff;
• Guide development and documentation of child protection intervention models, standard operating procedures (SOPs) and training materials, including focus on topics such as:
  • Identification and response to child abuse and neglect in institutions
  • legal work with children/adolescents
  • psychosocial support for youth in detention centers and family reintegration following release from detention
  • preventing youth recruitment by armed groups
  • work with former child combatants
  • assessing youth risk of being in conflict with the law and strategies to prevent involvement in illegal activities
  • prevention of and response to youth substance use
  • early childhood development and psychosocial support intervention and research;
• Support child protection-related program development efforts (including designing, editing, or reviewing results frameworks, proposals, etc.);
• Assess staff capacity and compliance with child protection and humanitarian core standards; in line with capacity assessment, develop and implement structured trainings for staff on core child protection standards, policies, child protection/protection mainstreaming, and other best practices in service provision;

• Develop dynamic training curriculum to include dialogue, brainstorming, group discussion, and lecture, as well as guidance documents, case studies, models and other materials related to child protection for in-house trainings and other forms of internal and external dissemination;

• Provide ongoing supervision, mentorship, and monitoring to key staff to ensure the success of capacity building efforts and the quality of programming globally; facilitate global community of practice for child protection country team staff globally;

• Collaborate closely with HAI Technical Team, including Technical Advisors in MHPSS, MEAL, Access to Justice, and Livelihoods on all overlapping/cross-cutting programmatic and capacity building issues;

• Represent HAI in external settings with stakeholders, including coordination and donor meetings, conferences, workshops, engagement with media;

• Determine gaps in current written child protection policies and procedures and develop policies in line with established needs; specifically, develop and cascade Child Safeguarding Policy for all staff members, consultants, volunteers, visitors, etc.;
• Compile child protection principles literature review of short- and long-form documents for staff to reference as needed; organize and upload all referenced articles into HAI’s in-house research database;
• In collaboration with MEAL team and other staff, develop standard indicators and assessment and clinical tools, including child protection case management forms for HAI based on cluster-approved guidelines;
• Set up effective feedback and response mechanisms as part of HAI’s Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) and Communicating with Communities (CWC) mandate;

Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in Social Science, preferably in Child Protection, International Law, social/child welfare, social work, or related technical field;
• 5-10 years of professional work experience in child protection, including international work experience in humanitarian and/or development fields, preferably in MENA region. Experience liaising with multiple stakeholders including governmental partners and other UN agencies/NGOs;
• Experience in juvenile justice and child MHPSS highly desirable;

• Expertise in the methods and practices outlined in UNICEF’s Minimum Standards for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action and the Child Protection Working Group’s Child Protection in Emergencies Competency Framework;
• Ability to articulate and explain child protection and humanitarian core principles and practices to a non-expert audience and ensure their understanding of those subjects, as well as ensuring that the trainees are competent in implementing those principles and practices;
• Experience assessing implementing staff’s adherence to child protection standards and conducting child protection training, coaching, and mentoring using participatory and practical methodologies; Ability to assess the needs of participants during the training experience and modify application of themes as appropriate;

Languages:

• Fluent in English
• Spanish, French, Farsi, Arabic., Kurdish and/or other relevant languages a plus.

To Apply:

Please submit CV and a cover letter explaining your interest and how your experience meets the qualifications required, as well as consultant rates. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. If you do not hear back from us within 4 weeks, please consider your application unsuccessful.

Heartland Alliance makes all hiring and employment decisions without regard to race, creed, color, age, gender, gender identity, marital or parental status, religion, ancestry, national origin, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, sexual identity, immigrant status, political affiliation or belief, ex-offender status (depending on the offense and position to be filled), unfavorable military discharge, membership in an organization whose primary purpose is the protection of civil rights or improvement of living conditions and human relations, or HIV infection, in accordance with the Organization's AIDS Policy Statement of September, 1987. Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodation should contact the Human Resources and Administration Office at (312) 660-1431.