The protracted armed conflict, widespread displacement, and over-stretched national systems and services will leave thousands of children in need of humanitarian assistance. To support the humanitarian response, Operations and Human Resources scale-up is required to provide dedicated technical support and oversight to the affected countries, in addition to providing quality assurance, and support to the Programmatic scale-up to respond to the rapidly multiplying Humanitarian needs.

Within this context, the key objectives of the Europe and Central Asia Region (ECAR) wellbeing strategy are to mitigate the impact of chronic stress on staff, raise awareness about resiliency, trauma and stress management, facilitate the provision of assistance to staff/family experiencing trauma and/or work related and/or personal problems, facilitate the provision of immediate support following a traumatic incident, and promote social support and other strategies aimed at improving the overall wellbeing of UNICEF staff in ECAR.

How can you make a difference?

The Staff Counselling Unit is committed to the promotion of psychological health and wellbeing with the goal of building the resilience of staff so that they can continue to be productive in order to meet the mandate of the organization. This is accomplished through the provision of counselling services to staff members and their dependents and by identifying and addressing psychological risk factors in the workplace. ECAR has recently scaled up the response significantly due to the Ukraine crisis, which continues to impact many lives, including our staff. The work will be done from the preventative and curative perspective at the individual, team and organizational levels.

In addition to duty station specific vaccine requirements, appointments 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 appointment. It does not apply to UN Volunteers 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 contracts.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for UN Volunteers 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 recruitment process and afterwards in your assignment.

Under the supervision of the Regional Staff Counsellor (P4), the Staff Counsellor (UN Volunteer) will provide support to staff and collaborate with Country Management Teams, Emergency Coordinators, HR, Staff Association, Peer Support Volunteers (PSVs), the UN Medical Clinic and UN Staff Counsellors. This post is part of the Regional Office but with regional remit and thus frequent remote support with possible field missions to the designated countries of coverage will be required. The Staff Counsellor will be responsible for:

• Preventative and protective psychosocial support:
  • Facilitate the provision of effective psychosocial support to managers and individual staff prioritizing emergency locations with the aim of mitigating stress and increasing protective factors.
  • Provide a safe and confidential environment where staff members are able to address professional and personal problems, either individually or in groups (modality: assessment, short-term intervention, referral).
  • Provide support and advice to the leadership and managers in offices on healthy work practices and approaches on how to effectively support staff and encourage resilience. Recommend suitable staff support strategies to managers during and following emergencies and other crises.
  • Deliver preventative psychoeducational programmes/training to address systemic issues and recurrent problems within teams and offices; develop and deliver tailored workshops and webinars for staff; raise awareness on common mental health themes and act as an advocate for anti-stigma programming.
  • Provide pre/post-deployment briefings to new staff.
  • Develop a creative system to build a network of external mental health providers available to provide services to staff.
  • Coordinate the Peer Support Volunteer (PSV) Programme for the country offices.
• Critical Incident Stress Management:
  • Provide critical incident stress management to groups and/or individual staff by following critical incidents: Using a holistic approach and may include services such as practical support, psychoeducation, psychological first aid, strategic advice to leadership, family support and individual or group interventions.
  • Contacting the affected staff member(s) and offering information about typical stress reactions, support and referral information.
  • Facilitating appropriate traumatic stress interventions, following a critical incident or traumatic event.
  • Recommending and arranging for individual and/or group follow-up support to staff and their dependents.
  • Regular follow-up contact and visits to staff in Refugee Response Offices.
  • Coordination with UNDSS counsellors, agency counsellors and PSVs, to ensure the provision of adequate psychosocial support during emergencies.
• Monitoring and oversight:
  • Providing on a regular basis statistics and trends on issues related to staff well-being, whilst maintaining confidentiality.
  • Alert the Regional Staff Counsellor and/or Country Office management team on trends that may be of concern in offices or offices requiring targeted support or managerial intervention.
  • Capture lessons learnt and best practices for dissemination as appropriate.
• Other:
  • Undertake virtual/in-person missions to the countries under coverage as per the Regional wellbeing strategy and demands from the country offices.
  • Identify and recommend prevention measures for systemic issues and trends.
  • Facilitates interface with the various services and resources of the organization.
  • Ensure the adherence to the professional standards of the UN Staff/Stress Counsellors Group (UNSSCG) as well as the Code of Ethics for UN Staff Counsellors.

Furthermore, UN Volunteers are encouraged to integrate the UN Volunteers programme mandate within their assignment and promote voluntary action through engagement with communities in the course of their work. As such, UN Volunteers should dedicate a part of their working time to some of the following suggested activities:

• Strengthen their knowledge and understanding of the concept of volunteerism by reading relevant UNV and external publications and take active part in UNV activities (for instance in events that mark International Volunteer Day, 5th of December).
• Be acquainted with and build on traditional and/or local forms of volunteerism in the host country.
• Provide annual and end of assignment self-reports on UN Volunteer actions, results and opportunities (for instance at https://vra.unv.org),
• Contribute articles/wrjte-ups on field experiences and submit them for UNV publications/websites, newsletters, press releases, etc.
• Assist with the UNV Buddy Programme for newly arrived UN Volunteers.
• Promote or advise local groups in the use of online volunteering or encourage relevant local individuals and organizations to use the UNV Online Volunteering service whenever technically possible.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability (CRITA) and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results.

The UNICEF competencies required for this post are:
• Analyzing [II]
• Applying Technical Expertise [II]
• Planning and Organizing [II]
• Formulating Strategies and Concept [II]
• Leading and Supervising [II]

To view our competency framework, please visit here:
“https://www.unicef.org/careers/media/1041/file/UNICEF%27s_Competency_Framework.pdf”

Click here: “https://www.unicef.org/careers/get-prepared” to learn more about UNICEF’s values and competencies.

psychological counselling, training skills, with special emphasis on managing critical incident stress, especially at international level.
• Additional training experience in a broad range of related fields, such as alcohol/substance abuse, stress management, critical incident stress and cross-cultural communication would be an asset.
• Work experience with developing and delivering online and face-to-face workshops and webinars on a range of well-being and mental health is desirable.
• Experience either working in a hardship location or providing counselling services to staff working under very difficult and insecure environments is an asset.
• Experience in United Nations System or international development/humanitarian aid sector is desirable.

This assignment will be in Istanbul requiring full time engagement. The UN Volunteer will be responsible for arranging her/his own housing and other living essentials. Please see the summary of UN Volunteer entitlements below. For further information, kindly review “UN Volunteers Unified Conditions of Service” document.

Summary of UNV entitlements International UN Volunteers (Specialist):

• Volunteer Living Allowance-VLA (per month): approximately USD 2,702
• Accommodation supplement (per months): %20 of monthly living allowance (appx. USD 540) when residing in Istanbul
Please note that the amounts can vary according to fluctuations of the monthly post adjustment.
• Entry lump sum (one-time payment): USD 4000
• Exit allowance (per month): USD 225 (when successful completion of the assignment)
• Medical, dental, life and disability insurance: Cigna Private Insurance
• Annual leave: 2.5 days accrued per calendar month
• Free access to different learning platforms and UN & UNV network

Notes: 1) The allowances are in no way to be understood as a compensation, reward or salary in exchange for the volunteer work. 2) It’s important to note that UNV assignments are volunteer assignments, not employment.

The purpose of the allowances and entitlements paid to UN Volunteers is to enable UN Volunteers to sustain a secure standard of living at the duty stations in line with United Nations standards without incurring personal costs. The allowances are in no way to be understood as compensation, reward, or salary in exchange for the UN Volunteer’s service. Contingent on specific eligibility criteria, location of the volunteer assignment, and contractual type and category, the payment of allowances will begin from the date of Commencement of Service For more information on entitlements please read the Condition of Service (https://explore.unv.org/cos). Please note that the amounts can vary according to fluctuations of the monthly post adjustment.