Maternal and Child Health Consultant, Prishtina, Kosovo, Health Section

Contract

This is a Consultancy contract. More about Consultancy contracts.

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, health

UNICEF’s programme cycle for the period 2021-2025 establishes the first decade of a child’s life as one of three priority areas, emphasizing improved capacities of the Primary Health Care PHC system through expansion and improvement of the Home Visiting programme and strengthening services for child developmental monitoring and early interventions, including parental counselling for nurturing care.

Since 2014, UNICEF supports the Home Visiting (HV) programme for maternal and child health, a programme that is fully integrated within the PHC services, complementary to facility-based services and part of a continuum of care. In 2022, the programme was introduced in the seven last remaining municipalities, thus reaching nationwide implementation. Since the beginning of the programme, over 80,000 children 0-3 years of age and 18,000 pregnant women have been provided with support on healthy development, nutrition, responsible parenting and parental wellbeing. With the completion of the scale-up phase, the ongoing work is focused on revision of the

programme towards a progressive model, ensuring a targeted approach and more intensive levels of services for vulnerable and at-risk children and families.

How can you make a difference?

1. Support the Ministry of Health and local health authorities to further strengthen the Home Visiting programme

• Support the revision of the Home Visiting programme to strengthen the progressive component of the programme for reaching more vulnerable and marginalized communities
• Improve coverage and quality of the Home Visiting programme for pregnant women and children 0-3 years of age at primary health care level.
• Monitor the implementation of the Home Visiting programme in 38 municipalities
• Meet regularly and support the local authorities, with focus on five selected municipalities (Dragash, Lipjan, Gjakova, Gjilan, Zubin Potok), to develop capacities to implement home visiting services based on the home visiting package.
• Jointly with implementing partners, central and local authorities, conduct regular monitoring activities and collect information from home visitors.

2. Support the Ministry of Health on strengthening the in-facility maternal and child health services provided at Primary Health Care

• Support the Ministry of Health to develop standardized child developmental monitoring tools and integration of such tools in the Primary Health Care
• Support the piloting and monitoring of the implementation of standardized tools for child developmental monitoring

3. Support the NIPH on activities for increasing the routine immunization coverage and the introduction of new vaccines in the immunization calendar (HPV, PCV and Rotavirus vaccine)

• Support the National Institute of Public Health on organization of trainings on Interpersonal Communication for Immunization for Primary Health Care workers.
• Monitor the activities supported by UNICEF for routine immunization and collect and report the data
• Other related tasks, as agreed with supervisor, including support to programme development and planning; technical and operational support to program implementation; networking and partnership building; as well as knowledge management

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• University degree in medical sciences, public health, nursing, healthcare administration, health sciences, global health, or other relevant disciplines;
• At least 2 years of relevant experience;
• Proven analytical and report writing skills;
• Fluency in oral and written Albanian and English is essential. Knowledge of Serbian language is an advantage;

• Previous engagement or experience with UNICEF or other UN agencies is an asset, especially previous experience with UNICEF maternal and child health efforts

  Competencies required: Information processing, teamwork, planning/organizing, decision making/problem solving, verbal and written communication

  Core Values: Commitment, Diversity and Inclusion, Integrity

  Core Competencies: Communication, Working with People, Drive for Results

  Functional Competencies: Formulating Strategies and Concepts, Analyzing, Applying Technical Expertise, Learning and Researching, Planning and Organizing

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS).

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks:

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.