United States of America: Child Protection / GBV Child Survivor Specialist

Job Title: Child Protection / GBV Child Survivor Specialist

Sector: Violence Protection

Employment Category: Regular

Location: USA-New York, NY - HQ

Job Description

BACKGROUND

Emergencies exacerbate child protection (CP) concerns and gender-based violence (GBV) against children and adolescents, especially sexual abuse and exploitation, issues they are already exposed to in times of peace and stability. During emergencies, many services for child and adolescent survivors of sexual abuse are delivered through child protection and GBV actors. CP and GBV practitioners play a central role in preventing and responding to sexual abuse by integrating mitigation measures and supporting child friendly response services such as individual case management. Connecting child and adolescent survivors of sexual abuse to specialized services is a critical and lifesaving activities. For these interventions to be timely and effective, good coordination among all emergency response actors is essential to ensure access to specialized response services, which take into account a child's age, developmental stage and gender. Yet often these services are organized through separate CP and GBV mechanisms that would benefit from increased collaboration and coordination.

SCOPE

IRC is seeking the support of an expert to improve the quality of and access to services for child and adolescent survivors of sexual abuse in emergencies. Working closely with the coordination structures of the CP Area of Responsibility (AoR) and the GBV AoR, the focus of this position will be to build inter-agency practitioner capacity, technically support the CP and GBV AoR Rapid Response Team, and roll out the Caring for Child Survivor's (CCS) guidelines. Additionally, this position will documents lessons learned, best practices as well as gaps in CP-GBV coordination at the field level, regional and global levels.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Technical support and capacity building:

• Deliver a global inter-agency training to relevant practitioners on Caring for Child Survivors;
• Review assessment tools and global guidance and integrate gender, age and developmental considerations and ensure CP and GBV resources mutually compliment and support data collection needed to ensure quality services and access to child survivors of GBV;
• Provide contextualized guidance for each emergency to which the CP and GBV AoR Rapid Response team members are deployed.
• Hold one webinar on good practices for improving access to and quality of services for children and adolescent survivors of sexual abuse; and
• Provide real-time remote support to practitioners delivering and coordinating services to child and adolescent survivors of sexual abuse.

Coordination:

• Document gaps and challenges in coordinating response services lead by GBV and CP actors for child and adolescent survivors of sexual abuse in emergencies;
• Document promising practices that increase access to services for child and adolescent survivors of sexual abuse to services in emergencies;
• Document good coordination practices for improved quality of services to child and adolescent survivors of sexual abuse in emergencies;
• Organise and facilitate 2 in-person forums, with coordinators and implementers, to exchange good practices between CP and GBV practitioners and drive the development of improving access to quality services for child and adolescent survivors of sexual abuse;
• Create a safe and virtual "community of practice" on the GPC platform to share, provide support, and exchange ideas between CP and GBV practitioners on GBV issues that affect children;
• Develop an action plan, based on recommendations derived from analysis field missions on gaps and opportunities - which will resource contributions from key agencies towards completing components of the action plan;
• Establish an inter-agency working group to advance the work and provide recommendations on next steps, including further guidance to be developed; and
• Support advocacy efforts and promote dialogue amongst key donors and decision makers around the importance of enhancing CP and GBV coordination efforts on GBV issues affecting children.

Grant management

• Develop detailed work plan and budget spending plans;
• Produce high-quality programmatic donor reports; and
• Track and review project spending and budget management.

Key Working Relationships:

Position Reports to: Senior Technical Advisor for Emergencies - VPRU

Position directly supervises: N/A

Other Internal and/or external contacts:

Internal: Regular relationships with the IRC Child Protection STA, WPE STA, CP Case Management Specialist, CP and WPE country support TAs, VPRU Ops team, and the VPRU Deputy Director for Emergencies.

External: Relationships with UNICEF, UNFPA and NRC, all partners in this project; CP and GBV AoR coordinators and Rapid Response Team members; other relevant inter-agency structures as required.

REQUIREMENTS

• Graduate level-degree in a relevant field (e.g. education, social work, international relations, refugee issues);
• Demonstrated knowledge and practical experience in the field of child protection and GBV in emergencies; functional knowledge of the CCS guidelines;
• Direct experience working with child survivors of sexual abuse;
• Field experience working in CP and/or GBV programs, ideally working within field level coordination mechanisms;
• Extensive experience delivering trainings, and experience with training on the CCS guidelines preferred;
• Excellent organizational skills: the ability to track and follow-up on various efforts;
• Excellent analytical and writing skills: the ability to draft briefs, reports, and syntheses;
• Good interpersonal skills: the ability to successfully interact with a variety of people;
• Flexible work attitude: the ability to follow direction and effectively learn and work in an inter-agency environment as well as self-motivate; and
• Language: excellent written and verbal English; French desirable.

Please follow this link to apply: http://www.aplitrak.com/?adid=YXN0cmlkLm1hdGhldy40MzIyMS4zODMwQGlyY2NkLmFwbGl0cmFrLmNvbQ