Complaints Response Mechanism Consultant 100 views0 applications

Job Description

The IRC has worked in Sierra Leone since 1999. The IRC has currently programs across three core sectors 1) Health 2) Women and Girls’ Protection and Empowerment (WGPE), and 3) Education. The IRC is committed to supporting the Government of Sierra Leone in the strengthening of the country. We seek to build upon our programming experience and introduce new programs that are adaptive, collaborative and evidence-driven, leading to a more educated, safe, healthy and empowered Sierra Leone.

SCOPE OF WORK

The IRC in Sierra Leone has developed a new programme framework, strategy and vision for 2016 – 2020. The country program has committed to ensuring that children, both in and out of school, have appropriate literacy, numeracy, social-emotional skills, and will work towards the reduction and elimination of barriers to ensure that girls are equally skilled and safe as boys. In line with this commitment, and in partnership with Concern Worldwide, Restless Development and BBC Media Action, the IRC will implement the four-year EAGER (Every Adolescent Girl Empowered and Resilient) as part of the DFID funded Girls Education Challenge program. The project which targets 32,500 out-of-school girls (aged 13-17) and aims to ensure they have significantly improved learning outcomes and transition to education, training or employment. Upon completion of the learning programme, girls will receive one-on-one mentorship to develop their individual transition plans.

IRC Sierra Leone endeavours to remain accountable to its clients by ensuring responsible use of power, combined with effective and quality programming that recognizes the dignity, capacity, and abilities of our Clients. EAGER will be implemented considering the highest safeguarding standards to ensure a safe learning and working environment for all programme participants.

OBJECTIVES

IRC Sierra Leone is seeking to hire consultant(s) to support the development of two key pieces of work that will help ensure safe programme implementation.

• Development of a Programme Specific Risk Assessment and Mitigation Plan for EAGER.

• Review and enhancement of IRC’s and each partner’s individual Complaints Response Mechanisms. The consultant is expected to work in collaboration with the other EAGER partners to ensure recommendations are relevant and applicable to each organisation’s internal requirements and policies, and Child Safeguarding commitments.

The programme risk assessment is to be completed in a participatory process with key stakeholder groups, in particular the programme client group. This process will look in depth at programme objectives and supporting activities in order to ascertain risk which may jeopardise the safety of participants and the effectiveness of the programme. This also includes safeguarding risks that are associated with the implementation of the programme, as well as other critical risks that may be relevant for vulnerable groups. The risk assessment should be informed by a basic gender analysis, which will allow the process to be able to identify gender-specific risks for adolescent girls.

The risk assessment will need to be conducted in line with the GEC Do No Harm policy. The DNH policy obliges projects to consider both the intended and unintended consequences of the project and to what extent they could have unintended negative impacts, such as entrenching inequalities and encouraging desirable behaviors and outcomes which generate new risks, for example challenging negative gender norms resulting in negative backlash towards women and girls within their homes and communities.

A mechanism for handling external and internal complaints will enhance the trust and confidence of our clients, staff and partners, and improve the quality of our work. The development of effective complaints response mechanisms will be guided by inputs by stakeholders and clients. This will include investigating the ways in which our clients in Sierra Leone access, understand, evaluate and interact with NGO support services, and what barriers they may face in making complaints in a time-sensitive, accurate, safe and confidential manner. The main body of work will be in supporting the thorough revision of the IRC CRMs, exploring options for increasing its effectiveness, and facilitating the design and testing process with key staff. In addition, the consultant (s) will work closely with partners to review their CRM’s, considering the research results, make recommendations to improve efficacy.

This will include working closely with BBC Media Action to develop recommendations that are relevant to the organisation requirements as a media production and broadcasting organisation. The consultant will need to collaboratively engage with BBC Media Action to ensure alternatives are identified that fit the organisations’ policy, regulation and mandate.

Consultant(s) are invited to submit proposals for both Lot 1 and Lot 2 combined only. Joint/team applications are feasible and encouraged. The specifics of work is defined in the below table. Subsequently each piece of work is described in detail:

Lot 1

Lot 2

Programme Risk Assessment

Complaints Response Mechanisms review

Step I : Research and review

Step I : Research and review

Activity

Deliverable

Activity

Deliverable

• Definition of Context and Objectives;
• Desk Research;
• Field research (FGD, KII, field staff FGD);

1.1.Basic Gender Analysis

1.2. Draft risk assessment

• Desk research (best practise for similar contexts);
• Field research (FGD, KIIs, );

2.1: Report

Validation and mapping (workshop – technical working group);

1.3. Final Risk Assessment

Review of 3 partners CRM’s;

2.2: Presentation to each partner providing recommendations for strengthening mechanisms for three individual partners partner

Review of IRC CRM and facilitate design process of new CRM process;

2.3: Presentation to the IRC SMT providing recommendations, based on field and organisational research

Step 2: Finalise Programme Risk Mitigation Plan

Step 2: CRM design, test and finalise

Risk mitigation plan developed;

Deliverable 1.4: Finalised risk assessment and mitigation plan including:

· Risk ‘register’

· Risk Management Action Plan and monitoring strategy (Contingency plan)

· Field SOPs for programme implementation

· Accountability guidelines: communication and information sharing (including CRM roll out to clients & child friendly reporting mechanisms)

Facilitate design process of IRC’s CRM and implement a pilot test, Finalise SOPs and roll out plan for IRC’s revised CRM;

Deliverables 2.4: CRM draft SOPs,

pilot test report, final CRM SOPs and roll out plan

LOT 1: Program Risk Assessment and Mitigation

1.1. -1.3 Conduct a Risk assessment of EAGER.

In order to achieve the above objectives, the consultants shall be required to identify and analyse key risks (organisational & environmental) associated with implementation of the project at all levels and the objectives that the project seeks to achieve. This includes, but not limited to risk in respect of the programme field implementation, monitoring, evaluation and research, programme & technical support and capacity building initiatives, and operations/logistics.

Risks should be analysed in accordance with the objectives of the programme, with a focus on the impact to the safety and security of clients, staff, indirect clients and other stakeholders, the impact to the implementation of the programme and its intended outcomes (including Risk matrix mapping).

The risk assessment report should identify monitoring mechanisms to update the risk assessment periodically over the life of the programme.

1.4. Risk Register and Mitigation and Accountability Plan

Mitigation measures should be identified as part of the process, in response to the risks identified, and should focus, where appropriate, on both the prevention (reduce the probability) and reaction (reduce the impact) of risk, citing those responsible for implementing these measures. These will include the following:

• Management and monitoring strategies/contingency plans, including appropriate referral

• Field Standard Operating Procedures – These should be developed for the central programme activities, and should be tailored to partners and specific activities where appropriate;

• Behavioural protocols – for interacting with vulnerable groups;

Accountability guidelines: communication and information sharing activity guide across EAGER, that is in line with CHS standards, tailored to specific programme components and/or target groups;

• Review current programmes and target groups;

• Develop accountability communication activities and content based on suitability, which may include; outreach activities, public information boards, community/specific group information sessions & campaigns, Focus Groups Discussions (FGD), household level outreach, community leader outreach in cooperation with partners;

• Key messaging should include information on topics such as staff behaviour protocols, programme parameters, CRM roll out & child friendly messaging and reporting mechanisms.

LOT 2: Complaints Response Mechanisms

2.1. Conduct field research: in order to analyse the context for client reporting complaints to NGOS in Sierra Leone, with a special focus on marginalised groups (inc adolescent girls)

• Conduct field research across 4 districts (minimum)

• Draft report on general complaints needs assessment based on the context for clients reporting complaints to NGOs in Sierra Leone, considering socio-cultural and accountability context, with a special focus on marginalised/vulnerable groups in communities, that considers practical realities such as local culture, language and literacy;

2.2. Conduct field research: in order to review the efficacy of IRC’s and three partner organisation’s Complaints Response Mechanisms and provide recommendations for improvement;

• Conduct field research across 4 districts (minimum)

• Produce and present recommendations for enhancing CRM’s of each individual partner based on field review;

2.3. Conduct an in depth review of IRC Sierra Leone’s current CRM, and consolidate learning around inclusive and effective CRM’s in other locations;

• Review CRM best practise materials including IRC’s CRM global standards;

• Conduct a review of current functioning of accountability mechanisms and client and staff awareness of procedures and reporting mechanisms.

• Produce and present practical recommendations for enhancing IRC Sierra Leone’s CRM based on field and organisational review;

2.4. Facilitate the design process in order to establish an effective, inclusive and accessible complaints mechanisms for IRC Sierra Leone which considers the following aspects (non-exhaustive list), in line with guidance from SMT, develop Standard Operating Procedures for the CRM and implement a pilot roll out in a limited scope. Develop a roll out plan based on learning from the pilot.

• Financial and human resource considerations

• Multiple channels for complaints;

• Client awareness, trust and ease of access;

• Gender, age, disability & diversity;

• Complaints logging, categorisation, processing and decision making;

• Response time (including timely response for safeguarding complaints)

• Data management in establishing and managing effective complaints (included data protection and consent)

• Feedback mechanisms;

• Inter-agency co-operation (Service referral to agencies, receiving complaint to/from other agencies).

Qualifications

Specific to the CRM component of work:

• At least 3 years of experience in accountability, client responsiveness, safeguarding/PSEA and CRM implementation or other client or client-facing work;

• Demonstrated experience in developing CRM SoPs for NGOs;

• Demonstrated experience with Safeguarding / PSEA at field level;

• Experience working in Africa, preferably West Africa

Specific to both components of work:

• At least 8 years of experience within the international development / humanitarian sector, with significant experience of direct programme implementation management;

• Familiarity with Core Humanitarian Standards Good knowledge of current sector trends in relation to safeguarding, protection, inclusion and sensitive programming in the context of INGOs;

• Strong understanding of gender programming

• Demonstrated experience of AAP / CwC work at field level;

• Demonstrated experience in systems thinking, organisational learning and facilitation of decision making processes;

• Demonstrated experience in quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis.

• Strong experience in writing and communicating learning effectively and clearly in English.

• Experience working with projects targeting out of school adolescents girls highly desirable.

LENGTH OF WORK

April – June 2019

DUTY STATION: Remote and Sierra Leone

APPLICATION

Interested candidate must submit a proposal including the following

• Proposal outlining a methodology and approach;
• CV or outline of relevant skills and experience possessed by the consultant who will be carrying out the tasks and any other personnel who will work on the project;

• The consultancy daily rate.