Child Protection Technical Advisor

The Opportunity - Child Protection Technical Advisor

The Child Protection Technical Advisor will use their in-depth contextual understanding, technical expertise, and relationship building skills to define and deliver our strategic ambition for Child Protection in Vietnam.  The role will lead strategy development and the technical design and implementation of high-quality programs that deliver change for children in both emergency and development programming. The role supports national advocacy and influencing, while driving strategic partnerships for new business development.  It supports the design and implementation of monitoring and evaluation systems to demonstrate impact, while sharing learning across our programs, teams and partners.  The role will work closely operations colleagues and with partners in Vietnam, building their capacity and building ownership.  This role includes a focus on external representation on priority issues including ending all forms of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of children in all settings, and the strengthening of an effective and sustainable child protection system. In the event of a major humanitarian emergency, the role holder will be expected to work outside the normal role profile and be able to vary working hours accordingly.

Key Responsibilities

Key Area 1:

Technical leadership:

• Provide technical leadership for Child Protection for the Country Office, and set the strategic approach in relation to the wider country strategy
• Build capacity of national staff and partners in key technical approaches related to Child Protection.
• Lead on development and application of innovative approaches to child protection.  
• Support project teams in producing high quality and timely reports to donors and SC members.
• Promote and support the appropriate implementation of Save the Children’s child protection common program approaches
• Develop and implement strategies to ensure gender equity, child participation and beneficiary accountability in all child protection programs.
• In collaboration with humanitarian colleagues, respond to emergency situations, ensuring timely and quality responses to humanitarian crises in line with international standards and technical best practice.
• Collaborate closely with relevant Save the Children members, technical working groups and other relevant stakeholders to ensure technical excellence as per latest technical discussions and approaches, and keep Save the Children in Vietnam team abreast of technical updates and discussions.

Key Area 2:

Program Development:

• Work with Save the Children staff to develop a clear funding strategy for child protection in VietnamDevelop concept notes and proposals to expand the child protection portfolio in line with strategic priorities and technical best practices for a wide range of donors
• Work closely with new business development colleagues to identify and pursue funding opportunities that allow for both integration into broader programs and standalone child protection projects; engage with technical partners, donors and colleagues across Save the Children
• Lead the technical scoping, planning, and design and proposal writing during new program development, and ensure that we design and deliver high quality integrated child protection programs for children, building on global best practice. Ensure that gender, disability and resilience considerations are reflected in our program design and implementation.

Key Area 3:

Program Quality:

• Build the capacity of staff in Save the Children’s Child Protection technical competencies ensuring complementarity with other programs related to Child Rights Governance, Education, Disaster Risk Reduction and Emergency Response, etc.
• Identify internal and external capacity building opportunities and resources for technical staff to build knowledge and technical competence, enabling the team to provide high quality CP technical assistance to Save the Children’s partners
• Conduct internal workshops and contribute to other fora to disseminate learning, best practices and ensure that a high level of technical capacity is maintained.
• Integrate program learning across the child protection projects, ensuring coherence of technical approach across programs, identifying best practice, and cross-sectoral complementarity.
• Ensure that regular project review meetings take place and are attended by the relevant project manager, and include technical support and capacity building needs of project staff.
• Work with Child Rights Governance colleagues to ensure that a rights based approach is reflected in our program design and implementation (in line with our child rights programming approach), with a strong focus on child participation
• Promote a Child Protection Systems Strengthening approach as the overarching framework, that supports working in collaboration and partnership with governments and local partners and working towards impact, scale and sustainability.
• Contribute towards the creation of an organisational learning culture that promotes the use of disaggregated data, evidence and analysis (including gender and power analysis) and understands its link to quality and accountable programming; Contribute to strengthening the use of equality-focused program principles and good practice across themes and sectors.
• Provide oversight and guidance to the program implementation teams to ensure that thematic program components are technically sound, implementation methods are consistent with national and global strategies, acknowledged good practice (e.g. Save the Children Common Approaches); and are likely to achieve scale, as well as equitable and sustainable results.

Key Area 4:

Representation, Networking, Communications and Advocacy:

• In alignment with Country Office strategy and leadership, engage in strategic positioning with donors, partners and government in-country, and ensure that Save the Children is a partner of choice in Child Protection.  
• Ensure that Save the Children is influencing and learning from others through national technical coordination and networking bodies such as child protection clusters and working groups.
• Strengthen civil society engagement in national dialogues and policy processes to end violence against children through working closely with advocacy and child rights governance colleagues. Ensure that the diverse voices of children, girls and boys are equitably heard and represented in our child protection work.
• Represent the program to National and Local government representatives, donors, partner agencies, etc. as required.
• Ensure the quality, clarity and consistency of technical components of internal and external reports (e.g. program reports, sit-reps, internal updates), working closely with awards, program implementation and communications colleagues as needed.
• Leverage and liaise with technical colleagues from across Save the Children, including technical working groups and centres of excellence, ensuring that learning from the Country Office is shared with others and global lessons brought back

Other tasks

The job duties and responsibilities as set out above are not exhaustive and the post holder may be required to carry out additional duties within reasonableness of their level of skills and experience, including adjustment on job description.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Master’s degree in Social Work, Child Protection or related field, or equivalent experience
• Social Work, Child Protection, Child Welfare or related qualification

EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

Essential:

• At least 5 years’ experience of leading the design and implementation of humanitarian and development programs in Child Protection
• Understanding of the Child Protection sector in Vietnam
• Familiar with child protection systems, social work with children and families, case management, positive parenting, community level child protection and integration of child protection with education and other sectors. Track record in successful business development/fundraising with institutional and corporate donors.
• Demonstrated program design, monitoring and evaluation skills, including designing pathways to sustainable impact at scale.  
• Experience of strategy development and planning
• Experience of context, capacity and policy analysis, and influencing and advocacy at regional/international level in order to hold duty bearers to account to realise children’s rights.
• Skilled at networking, representation and partnership development in order promote learning, strengthen civil society and mobilise resources. 
• Able to generate and use data and evidence to innovate, deliver, learn and share what works and what doesn’t work for children
• Experience of promoting quality and impact through at least one cross-cutting area: gender equality and inclusion, child participation, adaptive and safer programming; child rights; disability; migration and displacement.
• Significant experience in training, capacity building, and mentoring
• Excellent spoken and written communication skills in English and Vietnamese
• Good communication and interpersonal skills and an ability to motivate staff
• Experience of supporting humanitarian preparedness, response and recovery

KEY COMPETENCIES

Technical competencies:

• Promotes optimum levels of child development
• Works to strengthen the components and linkages within the child protection system
• Prevents violence abuse exploitation and neglect of children
• Responds effectively and appropriately to violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect of children

Generic Competencies

• Being the Voice of Children: Promotes evidence-based policy and public engagement that includes the voices of children and their communities
• Advancing Equality & Inclusion: Displays a commitment to ensuring everything we do considers the most deprived and marginalised children
• Building & Strengthening Partnerships: Promotes working with diverse partners as critical to delivery
• Child Rights: Promotes the rights of children in own work and in work with colleagues and peers

The Organisation

We employ approximately 25,000 people across the globe and work on the ground in over 100 countries to help children affected by crises, or those that need better healthcare, education and child protection. We also campaign and advocate at the highest levels to realise the right of children and to ensure their voices are heard. 

We are working towards three breakthroughs in how the world treats children by 2030:

• No child dies from preventable causes before their 5th birthday
• All children learn from a quality basic education and that,
• Violence against children is no longer tolerated

We know that great people make a great organization, and that our employees play a crucial role in helping us achieve our ambitions for children.  We value our people and offer a meaningful and rewarding career, along with a collaborative and inclusive workplace where ambition, creativity, and integrity are highly valued.

Application Information

Please apply using a cover letter and up-to-date CV as a single document and use format. Please also include details of your current remuneration and salary expectations. A copy of the full role profile can be found at:

Job Description - Vietnam - Child Protection Technical Advisor (2100031V) (taleo.net)

If you have any issues with applying via our system, please send email explaining your troubles to [email protected]

Closing Date for Application: 13^th May, 2021

We need to keep children safe so our selection process, which includes rigorous background checks, reflects our commitment to the protection of children from abuse.

All employees are expected to carry out their duties in accordance with our global anti-harassment policy.