Staff Support Consultant (psychologist/counselor) for Tigray 48 views0 applications

Duration

Tigray: A total of three visits to Mai Tsebri between October 2020 and July 2021, with 3 days of working days in each visit plus travel time.  The three visits are currently scheduled to be second week of December, last week of March, and fourth week of June, with possibility for adjustment.

The duration of each visit and the entire assignment are subject to extension, upon mutual consent and pending satisfactory performance and project continuation.

Background:

The Center for Victims of Torture (CVT) is a US based nonprofit humanitarian organization working on torture rehabilitation throughout the world. CVT is working with the Eritreans in Adi Harush and Mai Ayni refugee camps in Tigray region since 2013 and with the South Sudanese in Nguenyyiel refugee camp in Gambella region since 2019, training and supervising local and refugee counselors and providing trauma counseling interventions to the refugee population. CVT is registered with the Ethiopian Agency for Civil Society Organizations under the registration number 3056 as a foreign organization.

In Tigray, where this consultancy is sought, 5 Ethiopian Counseling Supervisors, 10 Ethiopian Counselors, 3-person EQUIP team (all counseling staff), 18 Eritrean Psychosocial Counselors, 2 Interpreter/Cultural Liaisons, 1 Senior Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Officer, Program Assistant, and support staff are currently working.  The program activities are supervised by 2 Ethiopian Psychotherapist/Trainers and the operation activities by Zonal Manager who shares his time between Shire and Mai Tsebri.

The CVT Ethiopia program works with refugees who live in camps, and all refugee staff also live within the camps. Provision of intense trauma counseling sessions take a toll on counseling staff, and they require support from an external consultant who is able to help them process their stresses and trauma, enabling them to continue carrying out their duties with compassion and diligence.

While this service is primarily and originally targeting program staff (counseling staff and Interpreter/Cultural Liaisons), M&E and support staff may also benefit from the services if time allows.

Scope of Work:

The objectives of the staff support consultant are to increase/strengthen staff resilience and to improve staff wellbeing in ways that are associated with better client care.  In order to achieve them, the Consultant is engaged to:

• Provide a protected time and space in which the CVT Ethiopia employees can receive support from an independent, external mental health professional, either in group or individually;
• Enable staff to express, discuss and process difficult or painful emotional responses to personal situations, clients and other people at work;
• Enable the staff to discuss obstacles to teamwork that may arise from issues between individuals, within the team as a whole, or in response to wider situations that are affecting their work.

Qualifications:

• Required: Advanced degree in and license to practice psychology/psychotherapy or counseling; and at least 5 years of experience providing individual and group psychotherapy for adult clients, of which at least one year experience working with survivors of trauma or those working with survivors of trauma.
• Required: Demonstrated ability to facilitate therapeutic peer support network.
• Required: Ability to create an atmosphere that is warm, validating, accepting, non-judgmental and non-confrontational; to listen and understand empathetically the staff members and explore options to manage difficult emotional responses or address particular problems; to provide psychoeducation and coaching as required; to maintain a strength-based approach to facilitate self-growth and increased confidence; to encourage and support self-care activities; and to ensure that the boundaries are maintained in group setting such that the staff do not feel overly exposed, criticized or threatened in any way.
• Strongly Preferred: Previous experience providing staff support services in similar situations.
• Strongly Preferred: Experience working with refugees or similar population.
• Required: Amharic and English
• Strongly Preferred: Tigrigna for consultant in Tigray