Protection and Safeguarding Specialist

Role Purpose

Street Child is seeking a Protection and Safeguarding Specialist to provide capacity strengthening and surge support to the essential protection and safeguarding components of a Multi-Year Resilience Programme (MYRP) in Pakistan. This is a 2-year programme and has the ambitious aim of assuring that the most vulnerable girls and boys of school going age have uninterrupted access to safe, protective, and quality learning.  Street Child will advise and assist on management, monitoring and measurement of the MYRP and assure critical capacity strengthening and surge support to the consortium to enhance local level action.

The main responsibility of this role is to provide technical support to strengthen our partner’s safeguarding capacity and contribute towards protection expertise within the consortium. The role holder will conduct a comprehensive safeguarding assessment of all consortium members to ascertain areas of improvement and to achieve 100% safeguarding compliance and build consortium partner’s capacity around safeguarding through support to operationalize policies and procedures, conducting tailored training for partners, and continuous coaching of partner personnel.

In addition, the Protection and Safeguarding Specialist will contribute to the development of Protection-related projects and programmes for Street Child in Pakistan, especially in line with their expertise.

Part 2: Key Responsibilities  

Capacity Strengthening and Surge Support (40%)

• Design and implement a comprehensive safeguarding assessment of all consortium members to ascertain areas of improvement for each partner.
• Develop and strengthen resources, training plans, templates and tools with reference to best practices and protection standards. Support the development and refinement of learning tools as a means to share Child Safeguarding and Protection resources, materials, tools, training plans, standards and best practices.
• Develop a tailored capacity development plan based on assessments for partners.
• Provide comprehensive training, including regular refresher training, on Standard Operating Procedures and protocols related to prevention, survivor support and investigations.
• Coordinate and work closely with safeguarding focal points and field level teams to deliver planned activities such as Safeguarding and Child Protection trainings.
• In collaboration with consortium members, develop self-assessment tools to track progress of safeguarding and protection components within the project.
• Enhance technical capacity of consortium member staff through coaching interventions  developed in agreement with line manager and consortium leads.  

Systems strengthening (40%)        

• Support consortium members to create a standard suite of safeguarding policies and procedures, including Child Protection Policy, Safeguarding Policy, Safeguarding Communication Protocol, Survivor Support Standard Operating Procedure, and others as agreed with line manager and consortium leads. This includes reviewing existing policies and procedures, providing technical inputs, and amending as required to reflect changing needs, national policies and donor policies.
• Provide guidance and support consortium members to operationalize safeguarding standards and a strong safeguarding system, including comprehensive systems for governance structures; for recruitment and Human Resource Management; for assuring adherence to standards by contractors, consultants and suppliers; for risk management, mitigation and monitoring; and establishing a comprehensive complaint, reporting and referral system.
• Create and oversee the smooth operation of a Safeguarding Committee, comprising of Safeguarding Leads from all consortium members, chairing meetings and providing mentoring support.
• Coordinating the activities of the Safeguarding Committee towards the practical application of policies and procedures, ensuring survivor safety and reporting and escalation processes are followed.

Project coordination, monitoring and reporting (10%)

• Preparation of monthly, quarterly, and annual reports relating to project activities as agreed by line manager.
• Regular field visits to provide technical guidance as required
• Monitor and evaluate delivery of capacity development plan as per impact indicators, and document best practice including lessons learnt.
• Monitor and support the implementation of MEL activities in relation to protection components of the MYRP in collaboration with the consortium lead.  

Contribution to organizational priorities (10%)

• Directly contribute to the development of projects for Street Child in Pakistan, contributing to child protection proposals in coordination with regional and global team, and providing guidance through a Gender, Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) lens.
• Keep up to date and informed on safeguarding practices and developments across the sector and where appropriate incorporate new learning into own and organizational work.
• Provide surge support to Street Child’s global and regional programmes as agreed with Asia Regional Representative.