Regional Accountability& Child Participation Adviser

Regional Accountability & Child Participation Adviser – Ukraine and Regional Refugee Response

ROLE PURPOSE:

The Regional Accountability & Child Participation Adviser will work to put the children and communities we serve at the centre of our Ukraine Refugee Response through supporting the response to integrate child-friendly, gender-sensitive, inclusive, accessible and appropriate accountability systems and child participation. The post holder will play a facilitative role to support thematic technical advisers, programme implementation teams, safeguarding, MEAL and advocacy teams to integrate meaningful and ethical child participation within their work. The post holder will be expected to mentor and/or capacity build response, existing country programme and partner staff. The Accountability & Child Participation Adviser will participate in relevant Communication & Community Engagement Working Group on behalf of Save the Children (when established) to advocate for child-sensitive accountability approaches in the wider response.

ROLE SCOPE:

Reports to: Regional MEAL Advisor, Ukraine and Regional Refugee Response (MEEE RO)

Number of direct reports: Regional Accountability Officer and dotted lines with country / response level accountability focal points.

KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY:

Leadership and strategy

• Champion accountability to children and communities and child participation within the response, and support all members of the response team to understand their roles and responsibilities in this area
• Support the response to develop and implement a strategy that is informed by children’s voices and promotes their rights
• Ensure plans to promote accountability to affected populations (AAP) and child participation are documented in the strategy and adequately budgeted for masters budgets
• Contribute to response strategy development by advising on identifying appropriate AAP and child participation approaches for different phases of the response (from the initial phase to longer term recovery efforts), recognising that approaches should evolve over time.
• Champion the use of accountability data and child/community participation analysis to influence strategic decision-making and advocacy.

External engagement and partnerships

• Actively participate in the Communication & Community Engagement Working Group. Share planned information campaigns, findings from AAP/CCE assessments, analysis of community feedback, or monitoring of child and community participation strategies to enable shared learning.
• Advocate for the voices and perspectives of children to be considered during development on Humanitarian Needs Overviews, Humanitarian Response Plans, and similar documents.
• Share learning and advice on child-sensitive accountability approaches and child participation with other members of the CCE WG
• Where inter-agency or common feedback platforms/mechanisms exist or are planned, influence the development of a mechanism that is safe and accessible for children
• Support the development of safe inter-agency feedback referral mechanisms, in collaboration with the safeguarding team and SMT
• Engage with the Education Cluster to collaborate on child participation and accountability plans (in line with the Global Education Cluster’s focus on this area)
• Identify local, national and international organisations with whom Save the Children can partner with to advance child and community participation and AAP

General implementation

• Analyse, using secondary data as well as primary data where required, what accountability approaches would be relevant and appropriate. This analysis should pay attention to the situation for children and for deprived and marginalised groups. This tailored political economy analysis should consider community dynamics, social norms, cultural beliefs, superstitions and other anthropological factors that could impact programmes.
• Develop a context-specific action plan to improve AAP and child participation for the Ukraine Country Office and Regional Response Teams, based on operational modalities, community preferences and global good practice. The Action Plan should have clear deliverables, indicators and timeframes to enable a timely marked improvement in performance.
• Identify additional resources (human, financial, technical, etc.) needed to implement the action plan and explore options to mobilise these.
• Ensure AAP and child participation are included in proposal design and proposal budgets.

Information Sharing

• Analyse the SC ‘Needs Snapshot’ to identify information needs and appropriate and trusted information sharing approaches
• In collaboration with child safeguarding and the communications team, lead on the development of child-friendly information sharing for the response as a whole, to ensure that children and communities are aware of Save the Children, its work and what they should expect (including expected behaviour of staff and volunteers)
• Advise thematic and project teams on good practice in child-friendly information sharing
• Lead on child-friendly Communicating with Communities work (for example, supporting dissemination of life-saving information), working in collaboration with other Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities Network members and the CCE Working Group

Child and community participation

• Work in a facilitative manner to support technical advisers and programme implementation teams to develop plans for child and community participation across the programme cycle (needs analysis and assessment, design and planning, implementation, and M&E) for their thematic area, considering opportunities for integration between sectors where possible.
• Act as the Save the Children focal point for the inter-agency children’s consultation for the response (in collaboration with Plan, World Vision and other child focused NGOs), with a focus on ensuring meaningful and ethical child participation and utilisation of findings
• Support safeguarding teams to imbed child and community participation within their work, for example collaborating on participatory risk assessments
• Support the advocacy and media/comms teams to integrate meaningful and ethical child participation within their initiatives, and to elevate the voices of children that arise through participatory work across the response
• Support child participation in response-wide processes, such as Real Time Reviews
• Explore how child-centred social accountability approaches could be incorporated within as soon as possible within the response or in protracted crises

Feedback and Reporting Mechanisms

• Use analysis of the context and community preferences to design appropriate feedback and reporting channels that are accessible to children and deprived and marginalised groups, particularly those on the move in this context. Support the MEAL and safeguarding team to roll out these channels across the response intervention areas
• Work with the Ukraine Country Officer and Regional Response MEAL leads to develop a Feedback Handling Standard Operating Procedure and ensure that feedback is handled in line with it, with consideration of appropriate data protection procedures. Where appropriate, support MEAL staff to establish and monitor the Feedback Database.
• Analyse and present regional feedback data to help inform decision-making and improve programme quality.
• Provide technical support to MEAL and Programme Implementation teams to ensure the feedback loop is closed meaningfully, in a timely manner and with quality.

Capacity building

• Assess the priority skills gaps and learning needs relating to AAP and child participation within Ukraine Country Officer and Regional Response staff and partners. This should include frontline workers and volunteers and support staff such as HR, administration, security, etc., who all have a role to play in improving the accountability of Save the Children.
• Design and implement a capacity building strategy (considering training, mentoring and coaching) to build the knowledge of, and commitment to, AAP and child participation approaches within Save the Children staff and partners (plus potentially staff of other agencies through CCE WG and Education Cluster).
• Develop context-specific capacity building materials by contextualising global and/or national tools.
• Identify opportunities to integrate AAP and child participation elements into existing training and tailor content to target the specific audiences.

Evidence and learning

• Document context-specific good AAP and child participation practices, to support replication by other country offices and responses.
• Support research into AAP and child participation within the response, and/or provide advice to research that will have participatory components.

General:

• Ensure effective linkages with MEEE regional and global work and broader initiatives
• Contribute to regional team collaboration, meetings and planning processes, internal initiatives and reporting requirements
• Demonstrate leadership in relation to Save the Children policies and practice with respect to child safeguarding, bullying and harassment, code of conduct, equal opportunities and other relevant policies and procedures

KEY COMPETENCIES

Generic technical competencies:

• Promotes the rights of children in own work and in work with colleagues and peers
• Displays a commitment to the safe, meaningful and ethical participation of all children
• Builds the understanding and capacity of others in child participation
• Promotes an enabling environment for participation, and accountability to children
• Demonstrates an understanding of how to include the voice of children in programme and advocacy work
• Influences others to adopt good practices in relation to safeguarding
• Displays a commitment to ensuring everything we do considers the most deprived and marginalised children
• Maintains a child rights focus when engaging in inter-agency and national response coordination

MEAL technical competencies:

• Designs appropriate and inclusive accountability mechanisms for varied population groups, including children
• Collaborates with safeguarding team to design accountability mechanisms that raise awareness of safeguarding messages and enable reporting of sensitive concerns
• Builds the capacity of others to support meaningful accountability to children and communities
• Champions the use of accountability data and community participation analysis to influence strategic decision-making and advocacy
• Supports appropriate and safe child-led MEAL activities and child-led research
• Manages inter-agency children’s consultations and other large-scale and complex child participation exercises

Child Rights Governance technical competencies:

• Analyses emergency and fragile situations to provide a comprehensive description of the child rights context.
• Ensures interventions respond to child rights priorities identified by children in affected communities.
• Works in collaboration with others to support meaningful consultation with children within an emergency response.
• Champions child rights and accountability to children as core operational considerations in humanitarian responses.
• Ensures that programmes promote children’s voices
• Supports others to optimise opportunities to amplify children’s voices in the public sphere
• Provides guidance on promoting advocacy designed and conducted by children
• Applies child sensitive social accountability principles in designing and implementing programmes (in recovery phase or protracted responses)

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

Essential:

• Masters degree in a relevant field
• Experience undertaking a leadership role in accountability to affected populations and/or child participation in humanitarian contexts.
• Excellent knowledge of the field of communication and community engagement and other areas around accountability to affected populations, including key sector commitments such as the Core Humanitarian Standard and Grand Bargain Participation Revolution.
• Significant experience in setting up accountability systems in responses, including feedback mechanisms and information sharing processes using multi-modal approaches.
• Experience in designing, managing and supporting others to implement safe, meaningful and ethical child participation in different stages of the programme and response cycle (needs analysis and assessment, design and planning, implementation, M&E and advocacy).
• Understanding of how AAP supports protection from sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA), safeguarding and safe programming.
• Experience of qualitative data analysis and report writing.
• A high level of written and spoken English, including an ability to write clear and well-argued reports.
• Proven ability in using data and analysis to influence programmatic change.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills, with a proven record of convincing senior leadership to support improvements to accountability to affected populations or child participation.
• Ability to work both in an advisory and a hands-on implementation capacity
• Proven capacity to supervise, train and coach/mentor national and international staff
• Politically and culturally sensitive with qualities of patience, tact and diplomacy
• The capacity and willingness to be extremely flexible and accommodating in difficult and sometimes insecure working circumstances.
• Commitment to the aims and principles of Save the Children. In particular, a good understanding of the Save the Children mandate and child rights and an ability to ensure this continues to underpin our support

Desirable:

• Experience of working in both first-phase responses AND recovery contexts or protracted crises.
• Language skills in Ukrainan/Russian is an advantage.
• Experience working for a child rights organisation and of child rights programming.
• Experience managing large scale children’s consultations.
• Experience in context or political economy analysis in complex contexts, developing recommendations and adapting approaches in response to findings.
• Experience of working with local and national partners on the topic of AAP and/or child participation.

We offer a competitive package in the context of the sector. This Role is offered on the basis of International terms and conditions. Also, interviews will be held on ongoing basis, adverts will be closed once a person is identified.

The Organisation

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 environment where ambition, creativity, and integrity are highly valued.

Application Information:

Please attach a copy of your CV and cover letter with your application, and include details of your current remuneration and salary expectations. A copy of the full role profile can be found at www.savethechildren.net/careers

We need to keep children safe so our selection process, which includes rigorous background checks, reflects our commitment to the protection of children from abuse.

All employees are expected to carry out their duties in accordance with our global anti-harassment policy.