With over 70 years of experience, our focus is on helping the most vulnerable children overcome poverty and experience fullness of life. We help children of all backgrounds, even in the most dangerous places, inspired by our Christian faith.

Come join our 33,000+ staff working in nearly 100 countries and share the joy of transforming vulnerable children’s life stories!

Employee Contract Type:

International Assignment - Fixed Term (Fixed Term)Job Description:

Country location to be determined based on response

Please submit your Cover Letter and CV in English.

Children’s lives can change in an instant in the wake of war, disasters and humanitarian emergencies. We see how vulnerable they are and how much they need our protection.

Joining our Emergency Response Roster means you can be a part of our response, providing immediate support when disaster strikes.

Here's where you come in:

As a Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) Advisor during a response, you will provide Mental Health and Psychosocial Support technical guidance for programming, clinical supervision, and capacity building of staff, implementing partners and guiding mental health and psychosocial support interventions. You will ensure effective implementation and monitoring of psychological intervention of mental health and psychosocial support, in relation to all tasks related to support of field and office operations.

In order to perform this role effectively, you must be able to promote and encourage a culture of compliance and ethics throughout the implementation. As applicable to the position, you will maintain a clear understanding of the refugee context, donor compliance, ethics standards and adheres to those standards. You will conduct work with the highest level of integrity and communicates World Vision’s Mission, Vision and Values to staff and to partners.

Key Responsibilities

• Oversee the technical quality of programming and technical expertise of the staff, while keeping with established international best practice guidance and emerging evidence.
• Provide clinical supervision to staff offering mental health and psychosocial support services and create a peer supervisory network built on foundations of knowledge exchange.
• Participate in the development and implementation of group-based psychosocial programming
• Develop and disseminate detailed plans and guidelines that will support delivery of sound MHPSS strategies appreciating the unique contexts where the different MHPSS interventions will be implemented.
• Ensure proper planning and implementation of mental health and psychosocial support interventions in the project areas.
• Ensure all grant interventions are implemented within schedule, plans and budgets and regularly review project status.
• Provide effective technical support to field project teams/partners on roll out of the recognized and approved MHPSS models and approaches (such as Problem Management Plus, Interpersonal Therapy for Groups (IPT-G), Self Help Plus (SH+) and Doing What Matters in times of Stress (DWM).
• Ensure implementing partners, and partner Government entities and Community workers have adequate skills and knowledge to deliver psychosocial support interventions at the household level through weekly supervision sessions, and provide training throughout the supervision process when and as required with the project clinical Supervisors
• Support structured MHPSS activities for groups of boys and girls of different age groups, with particular attention to survivors of SGBV, unaccompanied children and other children who present with signs of poor mental health and distress
• Ensuring assistance is provided to children affected by the conflict in a dignified, respectful, equitable and inclusive manner that supports their resilience
• Ensure children in acute distress are assisted to alleviate their stress, by ensuring that all staff / partners are trained on PFA and feel confident to use it.
• Provide materials for supervision sessions in liaison with the global MHPSS technical advisor.
• Guarantee MHPSS project team and partners compliance to all interventions as per WHO guidelines. The mainstreaming of inter-agency guidelines (e.g. IASC MHPSS guidelines) and standards across the different sectors of programme activities delivered by the sector specialists and its partners.
• Ensure care and safety of clients is being up held and safety risks are adequately responded to and reported to the response director.

• Contribute to proposal writing, donor reports and internal World Vision reports as required.

• Coordinate and monitor high-quality MHPSS programming throughout the response, in collaboration with the MHPSS technical team, field staff, and program managers.

• Conduct regular field visits for programmatic support and technical capacity building.
• Develop or revise MHPSS training materials, monitoring and evaluation tools, and client documentation forms as needed in collaboration with Global MHPSS technical advisor.
• Coordinate the implementation of research projects aiming to establish evidence-based MHPSS programming, including training and supervision of staff as well as joint monitoring of the rollout of the intervention.
• Conduct regular file fidelity to ensure a high quality service is being provided in line with World Vision MHPSS protocols and relevant international guidelines.
• Monitor the strategy and mechanisms for the integration of mental health and psychosocial support across World Vision inter-sectoral programming and ensure close coordination between the MHPSS department and other departments/sectors.
• Promote ongoing integration of MHPSS at the community level within health facilities and other community-based services.
• Provide oversight for and ensure completion of client tracking and supervision forms in liaison with the project psychologists.
• Maintain updated records of supervision to be used in Supervisor’s supervision in liaison with MHPSS technical Advisor.
• Ensure monitoring and reporting of serious adverse events witnessed during project implementation are effectively addressed.
• Ensure compliance to World Vision, WHO ethics and donor guidelines and standards.
• Ensure monthly monitoring of project indicators and facilitate regular reflections on monitoring practice to make improvements
• Ensure timely submission of quality reports (Situational Reports, Annual, Semi-annul and Monthly Management Reports) in line with World Vision grant reporting guidelines.
• Identify, document and disseminate promising practices on mental health research and psychosocial project
• Convene forums for sharing and learning while involving project stakeholders.
• Where opportunities arise, provide timely inputs and information for peer review journal publications.
• Ensure interpretation and utilization of assessment, baselines, evaluations and verification on quality of designs

• Support development of technical papers and or policy briefs on key issues for external engagement with decision makers

• Support the professional, technical development of the MHPSS technical team.

• Conduct regular MHPSS trainings and capacity-building sessions for staff on topics including case management, psychological first aid, Problem Management Plus (PM+), Interpersonal Therapy for Groups (IPT-G), and evidence-based interventions.
• Refining Psychosocial Needs Assessment Protocols and Skills;
• Designing and implementing self-care and team building activities
• Conduct competency assessments for community workers and psychologists and plan appropriate capacity support measures.
• Prepare all materials for training and team building sessions.
• Build capacity and skill acquisition of project psychologists, Community workers/Facilitators/Helpers in basic counselling skills and selected individual and group intervention.
• Ensure capacity building of project teams on ethical and quality research processes for mental health.

• Lead the capacity building initiatives for communities and partners to enable them effectively advocate for and implement MHPSS project interventions including MOH staff.

• Represent World Vision at relevant coordination meetings, including co-chairing Technical Working Group and promote interagency coordination and MHPSS guidelines.

• Liaise and collaborate with existing government structures and local authorities organizing MHPSS activities and advocating for collaboration on local MHPSS initiatives.
• Assist national partners in the development of the detailed mental health and psychosocial needs implementation plan in accordance with World Vision’s and donor requirements

• Ensure close working collaboration with key Government line ministries and other like-minded Partners.

• Perform other duties as assigned.

• The duties and responsibilities listed in this document are representative of the nature and level of work assigned and not necessarily all inclusive.
• Participate and contribute in committees and task forces as may be signed from time to time

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Mental Health professional with a Degree in Counselling Psychology, Psychology, Clinical Psychology or related field in Mental Health.
• Master of Arts/Science or equivalent in Counselling Psychology or Clinical Psychology, Clinical social work is an added advantage.
• Psychological Association Practice License or Accreditation is an added advantage.
• Knowledge of public health, protection, human rights, international development, project management or other relevant field is an added advantage
• Clinical experience at community level, either in a research or clinical capacity
• A minimum of 3 years working experience in mental health and psychosocial support in humanitarian settings and one of which has to be at a supervisory level.
• Experience providing clinical supervision in individual and group settings and setting up supervisory models for large-scale MHPSS programs
• Experience working with MHPSS Implementing partner’s in humanitarian settings
• Experience conducting MHPSS-related trainings and development of training materials
• Strong organisational and supervisory skills and strong g interpersonal skills and the ability to work within different cultural environments
• Ability to work within a team structure or in isolation, flexible, and can cope with stressful workloads and working with limited resources
• Ability to work under pressure and deliver in a fast paced environment

Preferred Experience, Knowledge and/or other Qualifications

• Training and experience in Problem Management (PM+), Psychological First Aid (PFA), IPT-G, mhGAP and other low intensity psychological interventions.
• Experience delivering cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT)
• Experience in facilitating trainings to non-specialised providers
• Experience supervising manualised interventions in humanitarian settings
• Experience delivering mental health and psychosocial support to children, adolescents and caregivers
• Understanding of a community based MHPSS approach.
• Hostile Environment Awareness Training (HEAT) or equivalent is preferred

Required Language(s)

• Effective written and verbal communication in English. Other UN languages such as French, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, preferred.

Required travel and/or work environment accommodations

• Ability to travel to/within domestically and internationally as required
• Work hours are often in excess of 12 hours per day during difficult periods of the response
• Responses are often mounted in insecure or natural disaster-prone contexts, which may disrupt normal work patterns and generate staff safety issues
• Work and housing environments may at times be well below normal standards in terms of facilities, equipment, food availability and hygiene

Applicant Types Accepted:

Local and International Applicants (IA's) Accepted