Kenya: Child Protection and Safeguarding Consultancy

Build Africa is recruiting a Child Protection specialist to support a consultancy into the child safeguarding policies and procedures in our partner organisations and to develop a child protection response framework for the Kwale Girls Projects it is implementing in Kwale County.

1. BACKGROUND TO BUILD AFRICA

Build Africa is an international NGO with offices in the UK and supporting organisations in Kenya and Uganda. It aims to improve the quality of education and support livelihoods by developing the capacity of communities. Build Africa works with communities stretching across several regions in Kenya enabling school communities to improve the quality of education they provide for their children.

Find Build Africa on www.build-africa.org for details of their programmatic areas.

2. BACKGROUND TO THE PROJECT

Recently funding has been awarded to BA by Comic Relief and the Big Lottery Fund to support two projects tackling the problems facing girls in accessing a quality education in Kwale County. The projects will work with three local partners: Build Africa Kenya who specialises in engaging school communities in the importance of providing their children with a quality education; the Coalition on Violence Against Women (COVAW) whose remit is to raise awareness and support communities to respond to incidences of violence and abuse against girls and women; and Kwale Welfare and Education Association (KWEA) a membership organisation made up of role models from Kwale County who champion the importance of education within the locality.

The project will work in 72 primary school communities in the Msembweni and Kinango districts of Kwale County. It seeks to achieve the following outcomes:

Communities acknowledge – and have increased capacity to address – violence and abuse against girls.Community attitudes towards girls education is improved, creating an environment where girls are supported to access and complete school.Girls have increased understanding about opportunities available to them, improving their self-confidence and aspirations and becoming positive role models to other girls.Adoption of child friendly and gender sensitive teaching methods resulting in improved quality of teaching.Improved education quality resulting in increased educational attainment and performance of girls.

For more details on the project see Appendix A for the project overview.

3. OVERALL PURPOSE

The overall purpose of this exercise is to ensure that there are clear procedures in place in each of the four organisations working on the Kwale Girls’ Project to safeguard and protect children involved in the project. These procedures must include details of how to manage an allegation against a staff member of breach of child protection policies and how to refer children to safe and appropriate services where necessary.

The consultancy has three key objectives:

Objective 1: To assess referral services available in Kwale County and to develop a specific project framework to respond appropriately to child safeguarding issues raised.

Objective 2: To work closely with BA partners to strengthen their internal child safeguarding policies and practices

Objective 3: To ensure that all key staff across each organisation has the capacity to support child safeguarding and respond appropriately to child protection issues in Kwale County

The work of the consultants will help to shape the organisational policies and practices of all four partner organisations to ensure that the children that they work with in Kwale County are protected.

4. SCOPE OF WORK

Objective 1: To assess referral services available in Kwale County and to develop a specific project framework to respond appropriately to child safeguarding issues raised.

It will be important for the consultants to map out and assess the services provided by local government and other actors in Kwale County to understand fully the opportunities for safely referring children to necessary services following an incident of neglect, violence, exploitation and/or abuse against a girl or boy. It is expected that this will involve the need for conducting qualitative research in the county to understand not only the services in place but the gaps in the provision and appropriateness of these services for girls and boys. It is expected that the response framework will be developed with a clear understanding about what support is available for different child protection issues that arise and where the challenges in accessing these might be. It is likely that the consultant will want to gather views from government and other services, as well as from other NGOs based in Kwale working with children and from Build Africa and partner staff.

The response framework will need to provide details how staff members should deal with any child safeguarding concerns or disclosures, including referrals of children to necessary, safe services. The framework will need to be simple to understand and follow by all staff. It is expected that where there are gaps in formal provision and government services support services and from other services such as NGOs recommendations are made as to the most appropriate course of action.

Objective 2: To work closely with BA partners to strengthen their internal child safeguarding policies and practices

In order to achieve this objective, it is expected that a full review of existing Safeguarding policies and procedures is undertaken for each organisation and that suggestions are made on how to strengthen these. In doing so, it will be important to engage with key staff members across each of the organisations to gain an understanding of the existing organisational policies and practices. Written recommendations to improve these policies and practices, where necessary, must be provided in a final report , which should also include a thorough analysis of the organisations’ capacity to deliver on the recommendations.

Objective 3: To ensure that all key staff across each organisation has the capacity to support child safeguarding and respond appropriately to child protection issues in Kwale County

A training and capacity building development plan should also be suggested for each of the organisations. It will be important to develop this plan based on a good understanding of the different organisations’ strengths and how they can help to support one another to build up their expertise. It is anticipated that the capacity building plan will be developed at a later stage when the project has already been launched and staff have had a chance to begin implementing and adopting the consultants’ earlier recommendations.

The consultant will lead the Child Safeguarding and Protection Review with the support of Build Africa UK and partner organisation staff members.

5. EXPERTISE AND EXPERIENCE

Masters’ degree in a relevant Social Science discipline coupled with advanced skills in Research Methodologies is desirable.At least 10 years’ experience implementing Child Protection programmes or other projects/programmes that require working with children.Extensive knowledge and experience of assessing child safeguarding systems and child-friendly referral servicesPrevious experience of setting up organisational child protection response frameworks and of training staff members on child safeguarding practices.Demonstrable experience of undertaking desk reviews, as well as research projectsSignificant experience of collecting and analysing quantitative data· Significant experience of analysing and synthesising qualitative data using a rigorous approach.· Experience of participatory research methods, in particular of facilitating data collection workshops with children in a sensitive and empowering manner.· Experience of working within a dispersed team, remaining self-motivated, using initiative and responding appropriately to constructive feedback.· Able to reliably access the Internet

For the full details of the appointment please download the attached Terms of Reference. All applications should be submitted by 5pm Wednesday 19th November.Interested consultant must submit the following documents:

Cover LetterCV including reference details of previous clientsSample of previous work in similar consultancy work (assessment/survey/baseline assessment), with contact details for commissioning client.Technical proposal including: (i.) Outline of methodology and data collection tools to be used; (ii.) A timeline of consultant workplan (guided by Section 10 of this document) iii. Full budget based on activities of the consultant, as well as any consultant and data collector fees If an applicant intends to work in a team, they should indicate all team members and attach their CVs. Clearly highlight the Team leader (whose minimum qualification should be Masters’ level).