UNICEF recrute un consultant international pour soutenir le déploiement d’approches simplifiées: améliorer la fourniture de soins aux enfants émaciés à travers ESAR, Kenya

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                                                                       TERMS OF REFERENCE

Background and Justification  :

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to reduce the proportion of wasted children to <5% by 2025 and <3% by 2030. Since the SDGs were adopted, the proportion of wasted children globally has remained unchanged at ~7%, with most programmes for wasted children focusing on the provision of therapeutic treatment. Therefore in June 2019, the UN Secretary General commissioned UN agencies working on nutrition (FAO, UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP and WHO) with preparing the first-ever Global Action Plan (GAP) on Child Wasting. The plan aimed to respond to the slow progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goal on reducing childhood wasting, and to growing calls for a more coordinated and streamlined UN approach to addressing this challenge.

The newly released GAP Framework identifies four critical outcomes to achieving the SDG target on child wasting and to improving early detection and treatment for those who need it to accelerate the delivery of essential actions to address the immediate determinants of child wasting, while aligning actions across multiple systems to simultaneously address underlying drivers that continue to limit our collective ability to protect communities, households and children from wasting. To contribute to the GAP, UNICEF proposes a paradigm shift that places emphasis on prevention to avoid more children becoming wasted and, when prevention interventions fail, supporting national primary health care systems to ensure the early detection and treatment of wasted children in ways that can be sustained by national systems while achieving impact for children. UNICEFs vision is aligned to the goal of the Global Action Plan (GAP) on Wasting.

Over the last few years UNICEF has accelerated efforts to test simplified approaches for the early identification and treatment of child wasting. UNICEFs strategy, working with national governments, implementing partners and academics, aims to assess the impact of a number of different operational arrangements across multiple contexts in sub Saharan Africa, including in the Eastern and Southern Africa region. Simplified approaches refer to a number of adaptations to the existing national and global protocols and are designed to improve coverage and reduce the costs of caring for children with uncomplicated wasting while maintaining quality. The specific modifications were chosen to provide the best possible care for the highest possible number of children by addressing some of the systemic and/or pervasive challenges in the often-fragile contexts in which these children live. The objective of simplified approaches is to improve the provision of care for wasted children so that barriers to access and uptake of quality services can be effectively and sustainably addressed by health systems around the world.

With the acceleration of the adoption of simplified approaches in the context of COVID across the region, the need for improved coordination and technical support to governments has only become more urgent. As countries look more and more to decentralize services and to relieve the health infrastructure, tools on how to simplify traditional protocols and to task shift to community platforms need to be made available. Furthermore, there is a need to ensure quality assurance and generation of evidence in the roll out of the simplified approaches and to facilitate coordination of these approaches at a regional and global level.

As a result, UNICEF is intensifying technical support for the scale up of simplified approaches for the early identification and treatment of child wasting across Eastern and Southern Africa. These efforts were accelerated in 2020 with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and therefore efforts are required to consolidate the experience so far, identify opportunities for continued quality scale up in the region and identify the resource gaps for such a process. Therefore the focus of this consultancy is to map existing simplified approaches across the region and technically support in the continued scale up and mainstreaming of efforts within Government systems, including the provision of tools, programmatic guidance and robust documented evidence required to adapt/implement the simplified approaches at country level.
The 12 countries which have initiated or are planning to initiate simplified approaches to wasting treatment include the following (with the 5 bolded countries having started earlier):

Angola, Comoros, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Scope of Work :

I. Goals  :

The scope of this consultancy is to : Accelerate efforts to scale up simplified approaches for the early identification and treatment of child wasting across Eastern and Southern Africa to increase programme coverage and reduce related child morbidity and mortality 

Provide details/reference to AWP areas covered : This consultancy will support the regional 2020 Annual Workplan: and contribute to activity 2: At least 8 regional strategies, plans, guidance and frameworks for accelerated stunting reduction are developed and/or up-dated. The consultancy will contribute to the programme area of wasting.

The contract will be issued and managed by the ESA Regional Office.

Activities and Tasks :

Under the supervision of the Regional Adviser Nutrition, supported by the incoming Regional Nutrition Specialist – Wasting, this consultancy will focus on the below activities during a contract of 11.5 months/163 days :

• Activity #1: Conduct a landscape analysis of the scale up of simplified approaches for the early identification and treatment of child wasting across the Eastern and Southern Africa region ;
• Activity #2: Assess the impact of the scale up on wasting programme coverage in select CO (to be defined consultation with the regional nutrition specialist – wasting ;
• Activity #3 Document findings for peer review publication and other types of knowledge products ;
• Activity #4: Identify and provide capacity development to select CO for further scale up on adaptation of simplified approaches ;
• Subject to satisfactory performance, the assignment may also include the following tasks under a second contract of 6.5 months/90 days ;
• Activity #5: Develop a repository of resources and knowledge products used in the region for the further acceleration of scale up of simplified approaches ;
• Activity #6: Provide in country training in at least 6 COs on the accelerated scale up of simplified approaches to early identification and treatment ;
• Activity #7: Support 2 regional workshops with GAP partners for dissemination of findings of consultancy and define way forward for UNICEFs contribution to the process

Work relationships :

1. The consultant will work under the overall supervision and leadership of the Regional Nutrition Adviser, and the day to day support of the Regional Nutrition Specialist-Wasting once on board, who will assist in coordination of the work with the various UNICEF country offices for the regional and country component of this consultancy ;
2. The consultant will develop a work plan in consultation with the Nutrition team at regional level (inception phase) ;
3. The Regional Nutrition Specialist-Wasting, in collaboration with the identified country offices focal staff, will lead on the country level and regional accountabilities to support this piece of work and monitor the progress of the work through regular monthly progress updates and reviews ;
4. The country level component for scale up and capacity development initiatives will be determined by the country office timelines and MoH clearance  ;
5. The end of consultancy performance review will be conducted upon receipt of all deliverables by the consultant, inputs from the respective COs and finalized by the regional office

Outputs/Deliverables :

Payment Schedule :

UNICEF’s policy is to pay for the performance of contractual services rendered or to effect payment upon the satisfactory completion of deliverables described in the contract. UNICEF’s policy is not to grant advance payments except in unusual situations where the potential contractor, whether a private firm, NGO or a government or other entity, specifies in the bid that there are special circumstances warranting an advance payment. UNICEF will normally require a bank guarantee or other suitable security arrangement.

Required qualification, experience, languages and competencies  :

• Advanced University Degree or higher in nutrition, public health, nutritional epidemiology or related ;
• At least 10 years of professional experience in nutrition, public health, related research at the international level some of which preferably in a developing country ;
• Knowledge and programming experience of recent developments on the application of simplified approaches to early identification and treatment of wasting ;
• Experience in remote training and capacity development  ;
• Experience developing reports, policy briefs and journal articles for a range of audiences including practitioners in the field and policy makers ;
• Excellent written and spoken English is required and fluency in French an asset.

Administrative issues :

• Following receipt of this TOR, the consultant is requested to confirm receipt, and share an expression of interest within 10 working days of receipt for the contract of 11.5 months/163 days, also indicating potential availability for the second contract of 6.5 months. In addition, the consultant will share an updated CV and contacts of three referees, proposed methodology outline and daily costs ;
• The consultant will be requested to provide an all-inclusive cost in the financial proposal for the 163-day/11.5-month contract and to factor in all cost implications for the work including travel that is indicated to commence in Q2/ Q3 2021 assuming travel resumes ;
• The Country level missions will be initiated once the country offices have obtained the necessary clearance including the ethical clearance for the research ;
• The contracts will run for a total period of 18 months, broken down into two contracts as per UNICEF rules – one of 11.5 months, then an unpaid break for two weeks. Subject to satisfactory performance, a second contract for 90 days over 6.5 months. It is expected that the consultant will be paid for completed deliverables according to the timeframe stipulated in the TOR and under the proposed contractual arrangement. Contract 2 may only be issued if performance in contract 1 is satisfactory ;
• Due to COVID-19 related restrictions and risks, there will be no travel component for the first few months however as soon as travel is permitted, it will be included as part of this consultancy

Conditions :

• The consultancy is based remotely for the majority of the time however as and when travel resumes in Q2/Q3 2021 country and regional office level support including office space will be provided for missions. No equipment will be provided from UNICEF and will remain the sole responsibility of the consultant ;
• The consultant is expected to use their own IT equipment (laptop, cell-phone etc.), where operating communication costs – long-distance calls, internet if any should be part of the overall quoted fees (no reimbursement will be applied) ;
• As per UNICEF DFAM policy, payment is made against approved deliverables. No advance payment is allowed unless in exceptional circumstances against bank guarantee, subject to a maximum of 30 per cent of the total contract value in cases where advance purchases, for example for supplies or travel, may be necessary ;
• The candidate selected will be governed by and subject to UNICEF’s General Terms and Conditions for individual contracts.

Risks :

• Risks include emergencies and crises that might affect country level information access, delays in government approval for duration of the consultancy UNICEF Regional and country office, will make the necessary follow up to minimize any foreseen an unforeseen risk ;
• Personal hardship on the part of the consultant may also constrain timely and good quality outputs from the consultant. The contract with the consultant will specify terms in which a termination of contract can be done if the work will be compromised

How to Apply :

Interested and qualified candidates should apply online using the button below.

As part of their application, candidates should provide :

1. Expression of Interest/cover letter that specifies how you meet the desired competencies, technical background and experience (no more than 2 pages) ;
2. A short CV (no more than 4 pages) ;
3. A financial proposal that should include daily rate and the total fees for the assignment ;
4. 3 Referees  ;
5. P 11 form – which can be downloaded from our website at: http://www.unicef.org/about/employ/index_53129.html