Child Protection Officer

Contract

This is a UNV National Youth contract. This kind of contract is known as National UN Volunteer. It is normally only for nationals. More about UNV National Youth contracts.

UNICEF South Africa has three strategic focus areas which are prevention and response to violence, adolescents, and Early Childhood Development. The UNV would be working with the Social Policy and Child Protection Section, an integrated section focusing on social policy as it relates to children rights and development in South Africa, and the care and protection of children from violence. The section is working to link cash with care, in an effort to maximize the impact of investments of key services, including social grants, health, education, social welfare and nutrition, and better link these services through integrated child wellbeing tracking tool to enable early identification of children and families’ needs and referral to relevant multi-sectoral services. UNICEF child protection section focuses its investment on deepening the quality of childcare in the country through strengthening home visits, parenting, and Safe Parks in the country and to bring levels of violence against children down. In the area of Social Policy, the section develops child-sensitive budget and poverty analysis and engages in advocacy and capacity building with the government on these issues.
UNICEF South Africa consists of the following sections, in addition to the senior management: Operations, Education, Health, Social Policy and Child Protection and Communications and Partnerships. The UNV will be working with the Child Protection. The team consists of five colleagues: Section Chief, three child protection staff, one administrative assistant. Key partners include Department of Social Development, Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, the Parliament and civil society organisations. The section also works with a wide range of partners from the private sector, academic institutions, and sister UN agencies.

Under the direct supervision of the Child Protection Manager and general guidance of the Chief, Child Protection , incumbent of the post will support the child protection section to implement the children on the move project, child protection in emergency and gender-based violence in emergency activities. The position holder will also support the Section Chief with the Child Rights agenda.

The UNV Child Protection Officer will:

• Provide a lead role in supporting the work of the Provincial Steering Committee (PSC). The support will include working closely with Save the Children and DSD to support the PSC to develop and implement priority activities. • Represent UNICEF in the Provincial Steering Committee quarterly meetings and feed the outcomes of these meetings into the National Steering Committee and high-level National Engagement including the Cross Border. • Support the Child Protection Manager to manage Children on the Move partnerships, this includes conducting Harmonized Cash Transfers (HACT) assurance programmatic visits, drafting reports, timely follow up on the implementation of the activities and the provision of the needed technical support to implementing partners to achieve results, meet their targets and respond to any challenges that hinder the timely implementation of their activities. • Support the Child Protection Manager in managing the Mental Health and Psychosocial (MHPSS) /Gender-based Violence (GBV) Technical Working Group ensure well coordination among implementing partners of “Children on The Move” program and coordination with national counterparts, including DSD. • Actively participate in the quarterly Protection Working Group meeting to support UNICEF’s role, including in strengthening Child Protection in emergencies responses. • Develop a dashboard to monitor humanitarian situations in the country that potentially have an impact on the protection of children. • Develop a progress monitoring tool to track UNICEF’s response to children in humanitarian situations in South Africa. • Dedicate 20% of the time to support the Chief of section with work related to the child rights agenda in building capacity of sector partners on child rights and support managing the partnerships. • Undertake any other related tasks as may be required or assigned by the supervisor. • To support the communication team at UNICEF to capture the best practices, success stories and shed light to the activities of the implementing partners to ensure the visibility for the ‘EU Global Promotion of Best Practices for Children in Migration’ project.

• Professionalism: • Integrity: • Teamwork and respect for diversity: • Commitment to continuous learning: • Planning and organizing: • Communication: • Flexibility:

• Demonstrated interest and/or experience (up to 1 year) in child protection or development work, including working with marginalized communities, refugees and migrants; • Motivated to contribute towards peace, development and child rights and to serve others; • Excellent writing skills, particularly ability to produce communication materials that are concise, reader friendly and accessible to different audiences • Data management skills, particularly ability to effectively represent complex data in accessible ways such as infographics, graphs etc.
• Good interpersonal, networking and communication skills; • Willingness to contribute and work as part of a team • Flexible and open to learning and new experiences; • Respect for diversity and adaptability to other cultures, environments and living conditions; • Fluency in spoken English is required with excellent English writing skills, and knowledge of another South African language is an asset; • Previous experience as a volunteer and/or experience of another culture, (i.e. studies, volunteer work, internship) would be highly regarded; • Computer skills (i.e. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, social media, and others). Skills in software to design communication materials and present data would be an asset.

Pretoria is a city located in the northern part of Gauteng Province in South Africa. It is one of the country’s two capital cities serving as the executive (administrative) and de facto national capital. It offers very good living conditions with various types of available facilities. Housing is most of the time readily available, rents can be negotiated. Infrastructure, roads, utilities, telecommunications – are of a high standard. The other is Cape Town, the legislative capital. Pretoria is classified as an A duty station and South Africa is in security phase 1. Like in other big cities with significant crime rates, caution must be exercised always.

As this is a national UN Volunteer assignment, the UN Volunteer will be responsible for arranging his/her own housing and other living essentials.