consultant

Vacancies
Call for Short-Term Consultancy

Analysis of the Situation of Children on the Move : assessing the capacity and the adequacy of the Child Protection System in Hungary to ensure the protection of children on the move.
Terre des hommes’ Regional Office for C/SEE, in the framework of the regional child protection project Mario, is seeking to contract a consultant that displays the human, ethical and technical capacities to conduct a qualitative research on the capacity of the child protection system and the adequacy of its measures, to protect children on the move, using a participatory research approach, including the views of children and communities.

Background

The project Mario today aims at improving the level of protection of C/SEE migrant children who are vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and/or trafficking. The project seeks – through transnational outreach research, advocacy, trainings and direct support to professionals and empowerment of C/SEE at-risk migrant children – to find multilateral solutions to the problems that children face prior, during or after migration and that require coordinated protection schemes for individual children. Services which protect at-risk migrant children in Central and South Eastern Europe from abuse, exploitation or other violations of their rights will be provided with a strong emphasis put on child participation. Activities at national and regional levels, coupling field work with a strong research component will also aim at fostering inter-institutional and transnational collaboration while promoting evidence-based and European solutions to the unsafe migration of C/SEE children.

Purpose

The Situational Analysis aims to inform the work and efforts of Mario project partners and of key private and public stakeholders on the functionality and effectiveness of the existing child protection system in Hungary, to track and respond to the needs of children on the move, in terms of accessibility, inclusiveness and pro-activity.
The main goal is to understand the vulnerability factors and the child protection related concerns that children on the move face – through a child participatory approach – and propose solutions that are in the best interests of children on the move, through advocacy, capacity building of service providers and direct assistance to children on the move.

The main tasks of the consultant are to:

1. Carry out an extensive desk research, reviewing all the available documentation, particularly official documents and reports to understand the phenomenon of children on the move in Hungary, its magnitude and whether the current child protection system is able to identify and respond to their needs and wants.
2. Assess children’s perception and views on how the movement has affected their lives and the relation of movement with the vulnerability of children.
3. Assess children‘s needs of services; what services are available for them in the territory; how much children are informed on those services and the access they have.
4. Assess the effectiveness of the protection system in terms of outreach, inclusiveness and response.

Situational Analysis process and methods:

• The methodology applied should follow the “Methodological Guidelines for Research and Child Consultation” developed by Mario project experts, which provides for a three step research process: desk review, interviews with stakeholders, interviews with children (inclusion of children as peer researchers may also be foreseen)
• The Situational Analysis process will be facilitated logistically by the Mario partner organization in Hungary.
• Situational Analysis will be carried out in a child participatory approach and therefore all tools and materials developed to carry out the research should reflect child participatory principles and child friendly techniques and respect the child protection policies and procedures.

Main Activities:

• Conduct a thorough desk research and collate and analyse documentary sources
• Identify groups of children and adults and their respective locations, that will be subject to interviewing.
• Develop the questionnaires for semi structured interviews and Group Discussions with children and key adult stakeholders. Actively involve children in developing and testing the tools for children
• Conduct observations, individual interviews and open group discussions by actively involving children as observers, co-interviewers and facilitators of group discussions with children
• Analyze the data collected by involving the children from the Child Consultation Board based on the project research methodology guidelines and prepare a final report.

Timeframe: the situation analysis should be finalised by November 15th including two rounds of feedback with the Mario project manager and advisers.

Total budget: Circa Euro 2,500 including all costs and taxes.

Required/preferred experience and skills of the researcher:

• Demonstrated experience in conducting qualitative research action;
• Expertise in working and consulting with children in similar researches or direct work;
• Very good training and facilitation skills with children;
• In-depth knowledge on Child Rights and Child protection concepts;
• Very good understanding of ethical considerations in conducting research work with children;
• Ability to prepare materials and conduct activities in the field;
• Excellent analytical and report writing skills;
• Outstanding level of English (the research is to be written in English) AND Hungarian. Romani language skills would be a plus.
• Ability to be creative and open;
• Ability to work under time constraints;
• Very good planning and time management skills;

The interested applicants should submit to Mr Pierre Cazenave (pierre.cazenave@tdh.ch)

• A letter of Interest highlighting the experience in using such methodologies and participatory research with children (no more than 2 pages)
• An English CV
• Two writing samples in English, one of which being a similar research, highlighting the methodology used for data collection and analysis

All persons who work with Terre des hommes Foundation programs are obliged to respect the Tdh Child Protection Policy and Procedures (the policy will be communicated before signature of the contract with the selected applicant)

The deadline for submitting the application is August 15.

For further information, see here (http://marioproject.org)