The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC offers lifesaving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war or disaster. At work today in over 40 countries and 22 U.S. cities, we restore safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted and struggling to endure. The IRC leads the way from harm to home.
We are recruiting to fill the position below:
Job Title: Child Protection Officer
Requisition ID: req9501
Location: Mubi, Adamawa
Sector: Child Protection
Employment Category: Fixed Term
Employment Type: Full-Time
Open to Expatriates: No
Background
IRC has been present in Nigeria since 2012 when the organization responded to flooding in Kogi state. In response to the Boko Haram insurgency, in early 2014 IRC opened a field office in Mubi town of Adamawa state followed by offices in Yola (Adamawa state) in November 2014, Maiduguri (Borno state) in October 2015, and Monguno (Borno state) in October 2016. IRC is currently implementing programs in Health, Child Protection, Food Security, PRoL, WASH, Nutrition and Women’s Protection and Empowerment (WPE) in three States in northeastern Nigeria.
The IRC Child Protection team offers Psychosocial Support through Social Emotional Learning (SEL) for children aged six to twelve years and Supporting Adolescents and their Families in Emergencies (SAFE) for nine to nineteen year olds grouped into younger and older adolescents using toolkits developed by the IRC to build their resilience, social skills and ability to understand and handle their emotions. The toolkits also contain resource that provides support to caregivers to help them manage their stress and place them in a position to provide the children under their care a safe and supportive environment for their growth and development.
Scope of Work:
This position is responsible for coordinating and supervising CP activities which include case management, parenting sessions and Safe Healing and Learning Spaces (SHLS) and SAFE activities.
They will also work closely with the case workers to ensure proper and quality implementation of case management and other components of the Child protection emergency response and other IRC sectors to ensure an integrated service delivery to beneficiaries.
Objective of Position:
S/he will coordinate with the Caseworkers and other relevant technical sectors, to ensure a rapid, proportionate and effective response.
Ensure that all activities under his/her supervision are conducted in accordance with the CPiE minimum standards, case management guidelines and SPHERE standards
Ensure that children are followed up on and receive quality case management services, taking the lead on case discussions/ case management meetings with case workers
Ensure technical quality of activity reporting
Provide staff care and support for case workers and CP assistants to ensure they are able to deal with the stress they encounter as a result of the kind of cases they deal with.
Technical Quality:
Identify gaps in service provision to identified and registered children, with a special attention to UASC and proactively refer and advocate for those gaps to the CP Manager and Coordinator.
Together with the case workers, ensure vulnerability of the identified and registered children are responded to with the involvement of the community where appropriate, ensuring the best interest of the child.
Establish/maintain a regular system of project evaluation and progress monitoring, using both qualitative and quantitative indicators, data collection, and beneficiary feedback and liaising with the CP manager and regular reporting as the response progresses.
Grant Monitoring and Reporting:
Ensure proper delivery of SEL/SAFE sessions.
Provide input for weekly and staff activity reports.
Ensure all challenges encountered are immediately reported to the CP officer and the cases that are identified and registered are captured correctly and shared with the CPIMS officer and CP Manager
Coordination & Representation:
Coordinate with the CP sub sector (Coordination at the field level) in order to assure that adequate and children centered solutions are taken in consideration in the strategic planning of activities.
Work closely with all IRC sectors and ensure an integrated approach to interventions.
Program Development:
Contribute to the development of child protection proposal activities
Identify Child Protection trends that need to be addressed through child Protection programing.
Coordinate with other the IRC Education team and sectors staff (e.g. WPE, Protection, Health and Livelihoods) at field level and ensure child protection mainstreaming.
Other:
Consistently and proactively monitor/asses the safety and security of field teams, promptly report concerns or incidents to IRC management and liaise with community leaders and other IRC staff to maintain/enhance the security environment for IRC programs.
Any other duties assigned by the supervisor to enable the smooth implementation of the emergency response.
Summary Statement Of Duties And Responsibilities
Work as part of a Child Protection team in a safe space to provide support to children as part of broader response services.
Participate in identifying facilitators and an initial SEL/SAFE approach training and engage in ongoing skills building using SEL/SAFE materials.
Participate in mentoring and coaching facilitators responsible for co-facilitating sessions with adolescent girls (younger) or boys (younger and older).
Ensure Payment Requests and other documents required for the payment of facilitators incentives are drafted and submitted on time for approval.
Work closely with other project staff to identify Children/adolescents (younger) and female and male caregivers to participate in SEL/SAFE learning activities.
Develop weekly, monthly and quarterly workplans for the case workers and assistants under their supervision and ensure strict adherence.
Embark on field visits and provide support to case workers and assistants in the field.
Build and maintain working relationships with community leaders and structures that will ensure their support for CP programming.
Complete weekly reports on project activities, including documenting feedback from participants of SAFE sessions and proactively sharing back lessons learned whilst facilitating the curricula
Organize and facilitate weekly team meetings.
