Consultancy for technical support to accompany local authorities in the process of localization of the Child Guarantee (Home -Based), Sept2024-Feb2025, Bucharest, Romania [574747]
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Location:
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Salary:negotiable / YEAR
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Job type:CONTRACTOR
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Posted:2 months ago
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Category:Language and Writing Services, Social and Inclusive Development, Youth and Adolescence
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Deadline:08/09/2024
JOB DESCRIPTION
UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.
Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.
And we never give up.
How can you make a difference?
Purpose of Activity/Assignment:
Although important progress has been made in the past decades, Romania remains the EU country with the highest rate of children at risk of poverty and social exclusion (39% – much higher than the EU-27 average of 24.8%), hindering the full realization of their rights. Inequality rates also remain high, with persistent disparities in economic opportunities and in access to quality services across different regions and especially between urban and rural areas, where over 49 per cent of children live. Children with disabilities, children from Roma communities and children out of family care are also between the most vulnerable and excluded categories; as of 2022, the group of refugee and migrant children seeking shelter in Romania has also grown into a sizeable group, including unaccompanied and separated girls and boys. One of the system’s main bottlenecks is that the child social protection relies mainly on social transfers and less on social assistance services, which still lack qualified workforce and it is unevenly distributed nationwide.
In 2021, the European Union adopted the Child Guarantee recommendation, aimed at ensuring that all children, and in particular those most at risk of poverty and social exclusion, had access to a minimum set of quality services and urging Member States to develop specific action plans and nominate national Child Guarantee coordinators. Consequently, in October 2023 Romania adopted a National Action Plan for the Implementation of the Child Guarantee (CG-NAP), in alignment with the new 2022-2027 National Strategy for the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of the Child. The approved version of the CG-NAP budgets approximately 18 billion Euro from both EU, State and Local budgets, for the implementation of 59 concrete measures divided in 7 pillars/objectives (participation, reduction of poverty and social exclusion, health, quality inclusive education, protection against violence, access to safe digital spaces, evidence-based policy design). This combined package represents the opportunity of a decade to truly change how vulnerable children and their families can access services where they live – if the NAP and its measures are indeed adequately resourced and fully implemented, and if this happens at both national and local levels.
While the overall responsibility for the implementation of the CG-NAP is mandated to central level authorities, many of the measures contained in the Plan as well as many of the services that the EU Recommendation is urging Member States to ensure to all children, are under the direct responsibility of local authorities. For this reason, it is critical to engage with local government to facilitate and support from one side the implementation of the measures of the CG-NAP and on the other side to ensure that the principles stemming from the CG Recommendation – primarily attempting to break the cycle of poverty and social exclusion through the identification of the most vulnerable children to guide an evidence-driven process of planning and provision of services, followed by a continuous monitoring and reassessment of necessities – are embedded into the local governments’ processes and governance. Only if the local implementation of the CG succeeds, adequate access to services will become a reality for all children and families and UNICEF in Romania has been developing strategies and tools to facilitate this process.
The major purpose of the consultant assignment is to support a process of co-design together with local authorities of a strategy for the localization of the Child Guarantee, and a resulting guidance document for localities, intended as an effort to embed a child and vulnerability focus into subnational evidence generation, planning, budgeting, service delivery and monitoring processes.
Scope of Work:
The Consultant will work under the supervision of the Child Protection Specialist and in close collaboration with the larger UNICEF team, as well as with local authorities, to accompany the analysis of the processes and governance structures at local level and highlight entry points to embed child-right based elements as well as and an evidence and vulnerability driven focus. The analysis will be conducted in at least 6 UAT (including at least one between municipality, town and commune), as well as county authorities of one county. The analysis will cover the following phases:
1. Evidence generation: To assess the local level data collection capacity and efforts and co-identify improvements/adjustments to ensure the local focus and capacity to generate evidence on children, especially the most vulnerable, and analyse data.
2. Planning: To accompany local governments in their planning processes (the local development plans) and suggest improvements/adjustments to embed the Child Guarantee principles in addressing the local needs emerging from the evidence generation phase.
3. Budgeting: To identify, together with local authorities, improvements/adjustments to ensure that sufficient local budget is allocated for children and capacity and efforts are invested by local authorities to mobilize other resources (EU, State budget, Child Guarantee earmarked funds etc.) for the implementation of their evidence-based local action plans in a sustainable way.
4. Implementing: To assess the provision of quality needs-driven services at local level and suggest possible improvements/adjustments to ensure effective access to the most vulnerable children, as well as the use of digitalized case management systems (Aurora/National Observatory) to monitor children’s needs.
5. Monitoring: To accompany the analysis of the existing monitoring systems at subnational level to suggest improvements/adjustments to ensure that they are capable to continuously assess and adapt the implementation, as well as to use as evidence for continuous planning and report for accountability and transparency, using both programmatic and financial monitoring.
The result of the process and of the strategies to improve/adjust identified will be the development of a guidance document, to be validated with local and national authorities, collecting all the results of the analysis, lessons learned and practical steps to facilitate replication in other localities. Finally, the consultant will conduct a rapid assessment of the current legal framework regulating the Public Administration, aimed at developing a set of recommendations on how to facilitate environments for the implementation of the content of the guidance on localization of the child guarantee.
Work Assignment Overview:
| Task/Milestone: | Deliverable/outputs: | Timeline |
| Planning | Report on selection of localities to be involved based on different geographical and social indicators | Month 1 – 2 days |
| Local level co-development | Report on presentation workshop with selected localities | Month 2 – 5 days |
| Report on working sessions with local authorities (min. 10 per localities/county) | Month 4 – 28 days | |
| Draft guidance document | Month 5 – 5 days |
| Development of Guidance and assessment |
Final guidance after validation process
Month
Report on review of Public Administration legal framework with recommendations
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Months 5-10 days Advertisement
Month6- 10 days |
To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…
- Education: Bachelor’s degree one of the following disciplines: Public administration, political science, sociology, social protection, education, social sciences and development sciences, or other relevant technical fields
- Language : Excellent knowledge of written and spoken Romanian. Knowledge of English language is an asset.
Knowledge/Expertise/Skills required:
A minimum of eight years of professional experience in working on local governance for children and/or strengthening social systems for children, including in their legal functioning
Proven excellent understanding of national and local level governance process and systems in Romania
Experience of working or cooperating with local and national level state institutions in Romania
Strong analytical and drafting skills
Good written and verbal communication skills and ability to interact with senior government officials
Computer skills, including Internet navigation and various office applications.
Relevant experience in similar activities with UNICEF, other UN agencies or development partners will be considered as an asset
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.
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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.
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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.
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