TITLE: Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) Technical Advisor
TEAM/PROGRAMME:
Impact and Influencing
LOCATION:
Damascus/ One of the Syria Country Offices within Syria with expectation to travel to other locations 50% of the time
GRADE: Grade 3
CONTRACT LENGTH:
12 months
CHILD SAFEGUARDING:
Level 3: the role holder will have contact with children and/or young people either frequently (e.g. once a week or more) or intensively (e.g. four days in one month or more or overnight) because they work in country programs; or are visiting country programs; or because they are responsible for implementing the police checking/vetting process staff.
ROLE PURPOSE:
The purpose of the MHPSS Advisor is to promote access among children and families affected by conflict in Syria to high quality and well-coordinated MHPSS programming in line with global standards and latest research. This builds on a growing and increasingly well-documented recognition of the critical MHPSS needs in Syria, and of the lack of available national and local services, NGO responses, referral mechanisms and documentation for this constantly growing challenge. More specifically, the purpose of the Syria MHPSS Advisor is to continue to lead the setting up and delivery of Syria Response Office MHPSS programs for children, adolescents, youths and caregivers and contribute to high quality of proposals and reporting. Furthermore, strengthening the capacity of Save the Children staff and partners while representing SC in high-level coordination on MHPSS and related task forces and forums, and actively seeking opportunities for future development and funding.
SCOPE OF ROLE:
The main purpose of this role is to provide strong technical leadership in the SCI Syria response Office on Mental health & Psychosocial Support. The aim is to enhance the quality of MHPSS work delivered by SCI and its Partners, bringing immediate and lasting changes in the lives of children.
Focus of the role will be on technical capacity building, programme quality assurance on MHPSS intervention and ensuring MHPSS is properly integrated across the sectors in a technically sound fashion.
Reports to: Head of Program Quality and Impact
Dimensions:
*Staff directly reporting to this post:*No direct reports but technical support and coordination of in-country relevant staff including MHPSS specialists and CP specialists based in the Area Offices
Other stakeholders: CP TA, Edu TA, Ops staff in AOs, MEEE MHPSS TA.
KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY:
Technical Assistance to Country Offices
- Ensure that MHPSS activities have sufficient resources and expertise at hand to build capacity, monitor, quality-assure, capture evidence and learning, and develop further in their ability to provide quality and needs-based MHPSS interventions.
- Be a focal point for SC Syria Country Office for MHPSS related activities and represent SCI in relevant groups and fora, including relevant donor meetings as required.
- Supervise and support to the field staff in the project sites in the planning, implementation and monitoring of MH-PSS activities.
- Organize regular meetings with the MHPSS focal points in each intervention location, provide technical supervision to case workers, community mobilizers that provide 1-1 counselling to beneficiaries.
- Lead the continuous assessment of MHPSS needs of children, adolescents and youths and ensure that these are appropriately reflected in Syria Country Office programme strategy and proposals.
- Support regular participatory activities with different groups of children, adolescents and youths to identify issues affecting children in their communities, and assist the teams to develop appropriate responses;
- Identify training needs of the MHPSS teams and assist the development of training modules, MH-PSS implementation tools and awareness raising activities for staff, volunteers, key community members and partners’ staff on various topics;
- Lead the scale up of the MH-PSS programme for women and girls, including for children deprived of liberty
- Set-up of safe mechanisms for responding to the needs of vulnerable children at individual level;
- Coordinate the designing of children, adolescents and youth and family assessments and relevant tools and supervise their administration.
- Technically supervise and support project’s field staff on providing basic psychosocial support for children through material review and approval, trainings, and on site observation and debriefing sessions.
- Ensure that the PSS activities (such as Child and Youth Resilience Programme) are implemented according to SC and international standards.
- Assist Save the Children in developing and documenting a replicable psychosocial model
- Assist Save the Children in development and rolling out of MHPSS Monitoring &Evaluation tools,
- Coordinate with other Technical Advisers (Health, Nutrition, Education, FSL, Child Protection)
Monitoring, Evaluation and Accountability
- Work with the MEAL TA and MEAL team at access points level to develop M&E and indicator tracking plans for all grants, inputting into the development of additional M&E tools as necessary to monitor project progress
- With the MEAL team, ensure appropriate, timely and accurate data collection at all PSS staffing levels against agreed indicators to enable both internal and external reporting
Staff Management, Mentorship, and Development
- Support in ensuring appropriate staffing within the operations component of the project team, within budget parameters.
- Leading in developing capacity building plan in consultation with line managers and other TAs to enhance the capacity of the MH-PSS staff
- Streamline the MEAL process and align it with the IASC monitoring and evaluation framework, as well as Save the Children’s ME framework, while driving transformative changes throughout the project cycle.
Safeguarding
- Ensure full compliance of Child Safeguarding Policy at field level and especially with SC engaged personnel.
- Respond to all Child Safeguarding Policy concerns expressed or discovered appropriately and effectively.
- Encourage and facilitate quality assurance of MHPSS tools and approaches in close collaboration with the CPI.
SKILLS AND BEHAVIOURS (our Values in Practice)
Accountability:
- Holds self-accountable for making decisions, managing resources efficiently, achieving results together with children and role modelling Save the Children values
- Holds the team and partners accountable to deliver on their responsibilities – giving them the freedom to deliver in the best way they see fit, providing the necessary development to improve performance and applying appropriate consequences when results are not achieved
- Creates a managerial environment in-country to lead, enable and maintain our culture of child safeguarding
Ambition:
- Sets ambitious and challenging goals for self and team, takes responsibility for own personal development and encourages team to do the same
- Widely shares personal vision for Save the Children, engages and motivates others
- Future oriented, thinks strategically and on a global scale
Collaboration:
- Builds and maintains effective relationships, with own team, colleagues, members, donors and partners
- Values diversity, sees it as a source of competitive strength
- Approachable, good listener, easy to talk to
Creativity:
- Develops and encourages new and innovative solutions
- Willing to take disciplined risks
Integrity:
- Honest, encourages openness and transparency
- Always acts in the best interests of children
QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE:
Essential
- Education master’s level within the field of mental health, such as psychology, psychotherapy or other relevant area.
- Significant knowledge and experience from the field of MHPSS, including child trauma, resilience & recovery, child development, work with parents & caregivers.
- Excellent knowledge and experience in using key tools and approaches, including the IASC Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergencies and MSP.
- Strong and extensive background in scalable psychological interventions, including training, supervision, and implementation.
- Significant experience working in emergency response, protracted crises or fragile state contexts (experience from the MEE region is a strong advantage)
- Strong experience with learning exercises, including management of assessments and evaluations
- Proven capacity to technically support, train and coach staff, including remote support
- Ability to write clear and effective assessment, project proposals and reports
- Excellent communication and influencing skills with experience in advocacy
- Politically and culturally sensitive with qualities of patience, tact and diplomacy
- A high level of written and spoken English and Arabic.
- The capacity and willingness to be extremely flexible and accommodating in difficult and sometimes insecure working circumstances.
- Experience of representation and ability to represent Save the Children effectively in external forums.
- Commitment to the aims and principles of Save the Children. In particular, a good understanding of the Save the Children mandate and child focus and an ability to ensure this continues to underpin our support
- Fluency in Arabic and English language; Kurdish language is an asset.
Desirable
- Experience of contributing to successful funding proposals for donors
- Experience or knowledge of working and living in relevant regions/contexts
About Us
The Organization
We employ approximately 25,000 people across the globe and work on the ground in over 100 countries to help children affected by crises, or those that need better healthcare, education and child protection. We also campaign and advocate at the highest levels to realise the right of children and to ensure their voices are heard. We are working towards three breakthroughs in how the world treats children by 2030:
· No child dies from preventable causes before their 5th birthday
· All children learn from a quality basic education and that,
· Violence against children is no longer tolerated
We know that great people make a great organization, and that our employees play a crucial role in helping us achieve our ambitions for children.We value our people and offer a meaningful and rewarding career, along with a collaborative and inclusive workplace where ambition, creativity, and integrity are highly valued.
Application Information:
Please apply using a cover letter and up-to-date CV as a single document. Please also include details of your current remuneration and salary expectations. A copy of the full role profile can be found at www.savethechildren.net/jobs We need to keep children safe so our selection process reflects our commitment to the protection of children from abuse.