Remote International Consultancy – Evaluability Assessment of the Cash Plus Schemes of UNICEF Iran Social Protection Programme #574096

Iran has been implementing the Unconditional Cash Transfer (Yaraneh) programme as one part of the social security programmes since 2010. The programme covered all deciles of the population in the first stages. Step by step, the government started to improve the programme by strengthening the single registry system, recognizing the eligible target groups, excluding non-eligible households, and moving to conditionalize the programme. One of the most important outcomes of the programme in Iran was the establishment of the Iranian REFAH information system (Iranian Welfare Database (IWD)). While this system is one of the most important systems for recognizing the target groups, the Government is going to strengthen the recognition of the target groups through the establishment of the single window system.
UNICEF, in line with the Socio-Economic Resilience Pillar of the UNSDCF (UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Frameworks) (2023-2027) as well as in the framework of the 2023-2027 Country Programme Document (CPD), is working to strengthen the social protection system including cash transfers. The Government has good experience in transferring cash and strengthening this programme is one of the plans of the government for reducing poverty in all dimensions and creating jobs. In this regard, UNICEF has a joint programme with the government of I.R. Iran, the Ministry of Cooperative, Labour, and Social Welfare (MCLSW), to support strengthening of the cash transfer programme to maintain the system is rights-based, child-sensitive and shock-responsive.

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Iran has been implementing the Unconditional Cash Transfer (Yaraneh) programme as one part of the social security programmes since 2010. The programme covered all deciles of the population in the first stages. Step by step, the government started to improve the programme by strengthening the single registry system, recognizing the eligible target groups, excluding non-eligible households, and moving to conditionalize the programme. One of the most important outcomes of the programme in Iran was the establishment of the Iranian REFAH information system (Iranian Welfare Database (IWD)). While this system is one of the most important systems for recognizing the target groups, the Government is going to strengthen the recognition of the target groups through the establishment of the single window system.

UNICEF, in line with the Socio-Economic Resilience Pillar of the UNSDCF (UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Frameworks) (2023-2027) as well as in the framework of the 2023-2027 Country Programme Document (CPD), is working to strengthen the social protection system including cash transfers. The Government has good experience in transferring cash and strengthening this programme is one of the plans of the government for reducing poverty in all dimensions and creating jobs. In this regard, UNICEF has a joint programme with the government of I.R. Iran, the Ministry of Cooperative, Labour, and Social Welfare (MCLSW), to support strengthening of the cash transfer programme to maintain the system is rights-based, child-sensitive and shock-responsive.

Cash Plus programme

The Cash Plus (or Plus Cash) initiatives aim at empowering vulnerable children including boys, and girls, to tackle and overcome difficult challenges, expand their opportunities, and improve their quality of life. It incentivizes and/or enables the use of social services for better health, nutrition and education outcomes. Building upon the experience of universal, unconditional cash transfers, UNICEF is linking social transfers with other services in Child Protection, Health and Nutrition, Education and Adolescents Development and Participation, as well as children in humanitarian settings. The Cash Plus programme integrates cash transfers with other services in order to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of these services and expand the outreach of these services to more children and adolescents. Cash transfer is not a silver bullet. However, when it is integrated with other services, it accelerates the effectiveness of the services.

Future prospect

UNICEF aims to design and implement two Cash Plus schemes for children in street situations (CiSS) and children of female-headed households and young girls. The objective of the Cash Plus for CiSS is to keep these children and adolescents out of street situations by keeping them in family and educational settings, while referring them to essential services, as the case may be. The Cash Plus on the empowerment of female-headed households and young girls aims to enhance the resilience of these heads of households and refrain them and their children to resort to harmful coping mechanisms. These two initiatives contribute to UNICEF and the government’s common outcome for children and adolescents to benefit from inclusive and equitable access to quality and well-financed social protection systems and environment.

How can you make a difference? 

The purpose of the evaluability assessment is to provide a systematic assessment of whether the programme is currently justified, feasibly, likely to produce useful information, and ready for a meaningful evaluation. It will also provide recommendations to inform future programme design in the period between the assessment and the Cash Plus evaluation. The assessment will provide UNICEF and its partners, local authorities, other UN agencies, donors, communities, private sector partners, and rights-holders including but not limited to the Ministry of Cooperative Labour and Social Welfare (MCLSW), with evidence-based insight into future program planning, adaptation, and coordination of the Cash Plus implementation and evaluation. More specifically, the objectives of the assessment are to:

• Assess the programme design’s logic and structure to ensure that the logic and structure are clear, relevant, plausible, valid, and consistent; and the logic and structure take account of context and complexity;
• Identify gaps in the availability and accessibility of data and information that may be required for a robust evaluation;
• Assess UNICEF and stakeholders’ institutional contexts for the practicality and utility of an evaluation of Cash Plus in 2024-2025;
• Identify potential geographical scope for evaluation of Cash Plus; and
• Provide recommendations for the adjustment of Cash Plus practices to strengthen the programme’s logic and structure, ensure the availability and accessibility of data, and account for institutional contexts.

Scope of the work

The assessment will cover UNICEF Iran cash Plus social protection programme for the dual ongoing scheme of children in street situations (CiSS) and children of female-headed households and young girls.

Exact number of stakeholders to participate in the evaluability assessment will be determined throughout the inception phase.

Methodology

Given the nature of the program, data availability, and the current context of Iran, this assessment will collect primary data from UNICEF and its partners and will make use of existing secondary data and other forms of documentation. There are Cash Plus data available, such as demographic data, needs assessments, referral data, progress reports, and program visit data; however, there are gaps in the available data.

The assignment will not include data collection from users of Cash Plus services. The selected assessment consultant will be requested to refine and submit the final detailed methodology for review by UNICEF. It is anticipated that the methodology will include a desk review of available documentation as a part of the inception phase.

The key questions for this evaluability assessment are structured around the three key factors in evaluability: project design; data and information availability and accessibility; and contexts. The assessment aims to answer the following questions:

1. Does Cash Plus have a theory of change, baseline, and monitoring framework in place? Have those documents been endorsed by UNICEF partners? How reliable and relevant are they to the program as implemented?
2. What evidence does UNICEF have that Cash Plus’ objectives can be achieved, given the planned interventions, within the lifespan of its funding, based on the contexts of Iran and similar interventions elsewhere? Which linkages in the theory of change (formal or informal) will be most critical to the success of the program?
3. How available, accessible, and reliable is the documentation (e.g., project proposal, progress reports, past evaluations, other commissioned studies, lists of service users, indicators) of Cash Plus, relative to what could have been expected? If not, is it feasible (with existing staff labor and funding) to make it available, accessible, and reliable by the time of any potential evaluation?
4. Will data and information be available and accessible for each of Cash Plus’ indicators during the time of the program’s intervention for a control group?
5. What are the physical security risks to collecting evaluation data face-to-face for Cash Plus?
6. Are stakeholder expectations of a future evaluation realistic, given the project design, likely data availability, and stakeholder roles? What Cash Plus evaluation questions are of interest to whom? How may previous evaluation experiences affect stakeholders’ interest in, commitment to, and perception of a future evaluation?

Sub-questions will have to be proposed and framed in the evaluation matrices by the assessment consultant as a part of the deliverables of the inception report; however, the broad criteria areas will remain the same.

ACTIVIITIES, DELIVERABLES, TIMELINES and PAYMENT

Inception and Desk Review

The consultant will receive and explore all documents available and required for the writing of the inception report mainly fed through a desk review. The inception report should include an elaborated methodology as well as a workplan with timeline and data collection instruments. Requests for additional documents and data should also be made at this time. The desk review should include a review of Cash Plus’ program records and related data. Evaluation and programme managers will provide data that are readily available from various sources. Nonetheless, the consultant is expected to be able to identify primary gaps and the potential documents required to address them.

UNICEF will provide feedback on the inception report for adjustments and will facilitate obtaining any ethical clearance required. The consultant is expected to prepare/develop all requirements for such a review and submit together with the final inception report to the evaluation manager.

Data Collection

After final methodology and data collection instruments are finalized at the inception stage, data collection will begin. All interviews should be remote. Data collection for this assessment will be limited, as most of the information needed for the evaluability assessment rests with UNICEF and its partners. When organizing interviews, the consultant will work with the Evaluation Manager to arrange a draft schedule of interviews to reduce burden on the UNICEF staff and partners.

Data Analysis and Reporting

The consultant should pay special attention to data quality control and work together with UNICEF, to exercise data quality control mechanisms intended to preserve the integrity and confidentiality of the data. Quality control measures should be included in the inception report, including confidential handling and storage of evaluation data, as well as culturally sensitive and ethical data collection according to UNEG (United Nations Evaluation Group) standards and ethical conduct.

Data analysis should be guided by the evaluation questions, and the final report should be structured around each topic area of the evaluability assessment – Project Design (Logic & Structure); Data and Information Availability and Accessibility; and Contexts (Practicality & Utility) – instead of individually by question. Data should be triangulated across sources.

The final report should be shared with the Evaluation Manager for comments. The draft report should be organized around these criteria, should be comprehensive, and provide detailed and specific results and conclusions, as well as clear recommendations for improving the evaluability of the Cash Plus programme based on the findings and conclusions stemming from the evaluability questions.

Deliverables

The contract will have the following deliverables:

Notes:

1. The report will follow the UNICEF guidelines and be cognizant of relevant UNICEF and UNEG guidelines for evaluability assessment.
2. All deliverables must be in English.
3. It is expected that deliverables 2 and 3 are presented to UNICEF in a PowerPoint presentation.
4. Each deliverable will be quality checked by the evaluation manager and other persons of interest at the country and regional level and payments will be released upon satisfactory submissions and iterations by the consultant.

Ethical Considerations

Ethical issues and considerations as per the UNEG ethical standards for evaluation should be adhered to. This includes explicit reference to the obligations of evaluators (independence, impartiality, credibility, conflicts of interest, accountability); and ethical safeguards for participants appropriate for the issues described (respect for dignity and diversity, right to self-determination, fair representation, compliance with codes for vulnerable groups, confidentiality, and avoidance of harm).

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

1. Advanced university degree (PhD preferred) in public health, social science, or related fields.
2. Minimum of 10 years of experience in leading evaluations in the international nonprofit environments
3. Should have led at least five independents national/international evaluations and/or evaluability assessment.
4. Demonstrated leadership of evaluations and evaluability assessments. Relevant work experience related to social protection schemes and cash interventions are desirable.
5. Completed training, certification or degree on evaluation, research, and qualitative and quantitative analysis.
6. Prominent level analytical and report writing skills and experience writing clear and concise reports for a range of audiences.
7. Working experience in politically and culturally sensitive environment is an advantage.
8. Strong interpersonal skills and ability to work with senior officials
9. Excellent oral and written communication skills in English.
10. Should not have any conflict of interest through paid involvement or any other aspect with the intervention under evaluation.
11. Flexibility to adapt the Evaluation methodology based on the contextual needs and limitations

Evaluation Process of the Proposal

Interested applicants are requested to submit their CV and cover letter as well as a financial proposal as part of the online submission of the application. The application/CV should include hyperlinks of the national/international independent evaluations led.

Only shortlisted applicants will be contacted for interview or further processing of the application as deemed necessary by UNICEF.

Conditions of Work

The work will be home-based, and the contractor will work on its own computer(s) and use its own office resources and materials in the execution of this assignment. The contractor’s fee shall therefore be inclusive of all office administrative costs.

The evaluability assessment will be funded and managed by UNICEF. The Evaluation Manager will supervise the consultant and approve all deliverables. Stakeholders, including UNICEF’s Social Policy section, will provide the assessment consultant with access to data and information and facilitate remote data collection.

UNICEF data, including intellectual property rights, are the exclusive property of UNICEF and the assessment team has a limited, nonexclusive permission to access and use the data. As provided in the contract, the data will be used solely for the purpose of performing its obligations under the contract. The assessment consultant has no other rights under the contract, whether express or implied, to any UNICEF data or its context. To maintain the integrity of stored data, data should be protected from physical damage as well as from tampering, loss, or theft by limiting access to the data. Confidentiality and anonymity measures should be assured by the consultant.

All persons engaged under a UNICEF service contract, either directly through an individual contract, or indirectly through an institutional contract, shall be subject to the UN Supplier Code of Conduct: https://www.ungm.org/Public/CodeOfConduct

For every Child, you demonstrate… 

UNICEF’s values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS). 

To view our competency framework, please visit  here. 

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors 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. 

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:  

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.