TOR – Advisory Services set-up

Call for Consultancy – Individual consultant
Advisory Services set-up

Title: Consultancy Services for the set-up, launch and test of an Advisory Service Approach
Reports to: Global Director Program Strategy & Excellence
.Duration of assignment: 12 Months
Timeframe: 1st February 2024 – 31st January 2025
Location: Nairobi & Hybrid working

Background:

Living Goods (LG) envisions families that have access to the healthcare they need to survive and thrive. This is achieved at scale by supporting digitally empowered community health workers who deliver care on call, making it easy for families access the healthcare they need to survive and thrive.

At Living Goods (LG), we support networks of trusted government community health workers (CHWs) to transform health outcomes for women and children and work to advance systems change by partnering with governments to sustainably lead. We focus on ensuring CHWs are treated as essential health workers who are digitized, equipped, supervised, and compensated, and we harness community-level data to transform health systems. We focus on treating some of the deadliest but most easily treatable childhood diseases, supporting women of reproductive age with family planning and safe pregnancy care, and ensuring every child is fully vaccinated.

Since 2007, LG has been working to close the gap between CHWs’ incredible potential to improve and save lives and the challenges they regularly face, including insufficient training, supervision, and access to medicines; reliance on antiquated and inefficient paper-based tools; and systems that treat them as unpaid volunteers, rather than as trusted members of a health care delivery system. In our first decade, we focused on establishing an improved approach to delivering care, and building an evidence base upon which we could learn and adapt.

In doing so, we embraced and codified the DESC approach, through which CHWs are: Digitally enabled, Equipped, Supervised, and Compensated. This is fully aligned with WHO guidelines on community Health systems. DESC is designed to improve the performance of CHWs, ensuring they are incentivized and can deliver high-quality health care at low cost. Through DESC, we have learned how to improve the performance of CHWs at scale and helped push the boundaries of the impact that community health can achieve.

The DESC model is a proven approach:A large-scale randomized controlled trial of LG’s CHW approach tied it to a 27% reduction in under-5 child mortality at an estimated cost of US$68/life year saved. LG today supports 12,000 CHWs across Kenya and Uganda to deliver an integrated package of essential reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health (RMNCH) interventions.

Living Goods’ strategic plan (2022 – 2026) focuses on the next frontier of impact, partnering with governments and other stakeholders to transform their community health systems, and strengthening the enabling environment by supporting robust digital community health infrastructure, increased sustainable financing (professionalization of CHWs) and political will, and strengthened government capacity.

One of our key pillars in the 5-year strategic plan is enabling resilient, effective government-led community health. This includes, 1) strengthening delivery through learning sites, 2) implementation support that enables government-led scaling for national impact, and 3) shaping the enabling environment around policies, financing, and tools for digital technology and data for decision-making.

Rationale for Consultancy:
Apart from the learning site and implementation support approaches (mentioned above), there is growing demand from partners and County governments in Kenya given the national momentum on Community Health including the rollout of electronic Community Health Information Systems (eCHIS) across Kenya. They want to leverage Living Goods experience in the professionalization of CHWs to strengthen their abilities to support effective and sustainable institutionalization, digitalization, equipping, supervision, and compensation of CHWs .
Living Goods wants to prepare itself to respond to those demands of advisory services and will require a strong leader to set up the foundations of this new approach. This will include reviewing the strategy, defining a clear portfolio of services to provide, developing the necessary tools and services, designing workplan and budgets, and project managing the initial testing phase.

Purpose of assignment:

• Lead and coordinate the set-up of an advisory services approach as well as the first phase of testing.

Scope of work:
i. Refine, get approved and adopt Strategy, workplan and budget for the test phase (2024).

• Review Advisory Services strategy, workplan and budget (2024), ensuring that it is consistent, comprehensive, adequate, and achievable ensuring that is signed off for implementation by the Chief Programmes Officer (CPO). This will include proper market shaping for 2024 and beyond.
• Kenya Country team engagement: Hold engagements with key functions/technical departments to ensure buy-in, clear points of collaboration, synergy and engagements are defined.
• Execute the workplan.

ii. Set-up and manage the Advisory services project team:

• In alignment with the Country Director – Kenya (and the Global Director of Programs, Strategy & Excellence), People & culture on the co-opted staffs to the project.
• Define and develop TORs for each co-opted team member to the project.
• Ensure Level of Effort (LOE) from co-opted staffs is documented and scope of work & engagement meetings/points is clearly defined.
• Lead the development and adoption of a team charter.
• Define and agree with project team on a cadence of accountability meetings, including performance and planning meetings.

iii. Services Portfolio:

• Review the portfolio of services to provide to partners and ensure they a clearly communicated internally (and externally, as need may be).
• Lead the development of modules, service packages including material and tools using existing documentation and/or complementing those.
• Define the cost of services and ensure a partner rate card is developed and disseminated to potential partners.

iv. Budget Management:

• Ensure effective project budget management; Limited overspends, full alignment on allowable expenditures and approvals in coordination with the finance team.

v. Deliver performance milestones of the Advisory services:

• Define and communicate monthly and Quarterly performance milestones.
• Write monthly & Quarterly performance reports, indicating achievements, challenges, and actions for improvement.

Deliverables:

• A refined & approved strategy, workplan and budget for 2024 by Q1,24
• A fully set up Advisory Services Project team by Q1,24
• Key prioritized modules developed by Q2, 2024
• Monthly & Quarterly performance reports which indicate, achievements, challenges, actions for performance improvements and lessons.
• Final report including learnings, recommendations on way forward and revised strategy for the Advisory Services Approach.

Evaluation and Qualification Criteria

• General Education, Qualification, and Relevant Training – 20 Points.
• Experience, Technical Expertise – 80 Points

Required qualifications and experience

• Master´s degree in public health, Community Development, MBA
• At least 5 to 10 years’ experience in a renowned consultancy firm
• Experience in public health or community health programming an added advantage
• Technical skills in developing and delivering consultancy to NGOs and Government bodies
• Ability to deliver in a start-up mode i.e., be both a thinker and a doer
• Experience in stakeholder engagement
• Proficiency in oral communication and presentation
• Proficiency in written communication in English essential

Living Goods is an equal opportunity employer and will consider every qualified applicant for employment. Living Goods does not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, national origin, ancestry, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or disability.

Our current job openings are displayed on our website, where you can search for open positions and apply directly. Living Goods does not offer any positions without an interview and never asks candidates for money. If you are asked for money, we strongly recommend that you do not respond and do not send money or personal information.