National Consultant - ECCD; Dhaka; Only for Bangladeshi Nationals-Readvertisement

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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.

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Background

Evidence from the neuroscience is clear that 80% of brain develops from conception until three years of age. For healthy brain development in these years, children need a safe, secure and loving environment, with the right nutrition, good health and stimulation from their parents or caregivers. This is a window of opportunity to lay a foundation of health and wellbeing that play important role in a child’s physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development- the four domains of early childhood care and development (ECCD) which children need to develop to reach their potential. Investing on ECCD is cost-effective. Every dollar spent on high-quality, birth-to-five programs for disadvantaged children delivers a 13% per annum return on investment[1]. ECCD help children for school preparedness, perform well at school, improved health seeking behavior, increased employment and productivity, better socio-economic development, delayed parenthood/reduced teenage pregnancy and less social problems.

The Global Nurturing Care Strategy[2] for ECCD provides guidance on early interventions of its five components; good health, adequate nutrition, security & safety, responsive caregiving and opportunity for early learning that are crucial for children to develop and growth to their full potential. In these earliest years, the health sector is uniquely positioned to provide support for nurturing care. From age 3, children move into more formal preschool settings where the education sector plays a pivotal role. The Nurturing Care Strategy is mindful that optimal development results from interventions in many stages of life. While the strategy covers 0-8 years, it focuses on the period from pregnancy to age 3 in order to draw attention to the health sector’s extensive reach, and to make use of it.

Nurturing Care Strategy and Key Interventions (Lancet Series on ECD, 2016)

There are four key enabling environments that are important to ensure the ECCD interventions are accessible and utilized. They are

  1. Enabling Policy: What are key policies available; Laws and regulations (i.e. UHC, BMS Act, Paid maternity leave, etc)
  2. Supportive Services, including Institutional Capacity: How the basic social services can support the nurturing care interventions; is institutional capacity available?
  3. Community empowerment: is there any community support platforms for nurturing care exist and functioning?
  4. Caregivers’ Capabilities: What are interventions required to enhance caregiver’s capacity for ECCD practices?

Bangladesh Context

Bangladesh has made significant achievements in child mortality rates and rapid reduction of fertility rate. These are very positive development outcomes that Bangladesh should be proud of. At the same time, a success in one stage of life can lead to a challenge in the next. As a result of rapid Health and Demographic Transition, now Bangladesh need to address the challenges on the very rapid aging of population which is faster than Japan and most likely one of the fasters in the world.

The rapid aging population has shorter demographic window of opportunity – that is the period of time in a nation’s demographic evolution when the proportion of population of working age group is particularly prominent. This occurs when the demographic window architecture of a population becomes younger and the percentage of people able to work reaches its height. Rapid aging population also means that rapid increasing burden of working age population (15-64 years) to take care of the senior dependent population (>65 years)

As results of these trends, today’s children need to become far more productive than today’s adults by the time they become adults themselves - twice, thrice or even tour times in such trends. This trend also requires prioritized investment in human resource development particularly in social sectors such as health, nutrition, WASH, education, early childhood development and protection of children and women.

Prioritizing investment in early childhood development, therefore, is highly time-sensitive, because Bangladesh is going to have historically the largest cohort of working-age population in the next few decades; and then, the country’s demographic window of opportunity will start to close in 1.5-decade time.

Enabling Policy for ECCD in Bangladesh

In Bangladesh context, there is a strong policy environment that supports ECD. The Early Child Care and Development Policy was approved in 2013,commissioned by the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs (MoWCA), with the aim to nurture and raise all children with care, security, dignity, affection and love and to establish a solid foundation for their development, irrespective of ethnicity, geographical location, gender, religion, special needs and socio-economic conditions. Similarly, in 2014, MoWCA adopted the Early Learning Development strategy in early childhood. Following this, in 2015 under the leadership of MoWCA and technical support from UNICEF, the Early Learning Development Standards (ELDS) in Bangladesh was developed, However, many of these efforts are primarily linked to school learning outcome and focused on needs of children 3 years and above.

MoWCA play overall coordination with 11 relevant ministries include: Ministry of Primary and Mass Education (MoPME), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), Ministry of Education (MoE), Ministry of Social Welfare (MoSW), Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperatives (MoLGRDC), Ministry of Cultural Affairs (MoCA), Ministry of Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs (MoCHTA), Ministry of Religious Affairs (MoRA), The Ministry of Information (MoI), Ministry of Home (MoH) and Ministry of Food and Disaster Management (MoFDM). However, a cross-ministerial accountability strategy is not in place. Neither is a coordinated outreach mechanism to the private sector.

Among the government, Ministry of Primary and Mass Education, MoWCA, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Ministry of Chattogram Hill Tract Affairs, Bangladesh Shishu Academy, Ministry of Social Welfare, Institute of Child and Mother Health, National Institute of Population Research and Training are the important stakeholders of ECCD policy and programmes in Bangladesh. Bangladesh’s child development centres (Shishu Bikash Kendra [SBK]): a public–private partnership to support young children with disabilities and their families was established in 2008 to ensure early screening, assessment, intervention, treatment, and management of the entire range of developmental delays, disorders, impairments, and disabilities. Furthermore, about 10 international NGOs and 12 national NGOs including BRAC, icddr,b, Save the Children, Plan International, Phulki are found to be active in supporting ECCD interventions.

Number of studies and researches on the integrated ECD programme in Bangladesh has also key partner in research, with ongoing national studies that are documenting the impact of poor nutrition and environment on brain development, but also demonstrating possible models by which poor nutrition in early years can be partially reversed with investments in parenting and psychosocial stimulation of children.

The most recently published studies by icddr,b from two large cluster randomized-controlled trials where they trained the frontline health workers to provide sessions on psychosocial stimulation to malnourished children found that children substantially benefitted in their development and behavior and their mothers’ knowledge of children rearing and quality of home stimulation was significantly improved. These studies are critical to move from policy to programs, and to design, and implement programs at scale, with cross sectoral links between MoWCA and MoHFW. By linking programs and policies across these two ministries, gaps in the operational plan of the ECD Plan that focuses on 0-3 years following Nurturing Care strategy and establishes linkage between primary health care delivery system with community- and home-based care can be addressed.

The recent systematic review of ECCD policy and programme implemented with UNICEF support reaffirm the key gaps for integrated ECCD programme. One of key recommendations from the systematic review is to develop a design/model for a scalable integrated ECD programmes, to strengthen interventions for 0-3 years old, which potential platform (Primary Health Care) and link with community-based services.

The gaps for the four components of enabling environment for integrated ECCD are:

  1. Enabling policy:
    1. coordination mechanism among relevant ministries to implement ECCD Policy 2013
    2. strengthen partnership with private sector
  2. Supportive Services and Institutional capacity
    1. HR and capacity nurturing care service providers at health facilities, community, workplace and other sectors’ platforms
    2. quality of social basic services (health, nutrition)
    3. evidence for scalable integrated ECCD (0-3yr)
    4. M&E for ECCD and data/IM system
    5. comprehensive guidelines, modules, tools and package for integrated ECCD
    6. ECCD in the preparedness and response for emergency
  3. Community Empowerment
    1. national SBCC strategy and advocacy on Nurturing Care
    2. awareness and knowledge among nurturing care service providers
    3. contextualized comprehensive guidelines, modules, tools and package for integrated gender-, disability-responsive ECCD for development, humanitarian, urban and rural settings
  4. Caregivers Capabilities
    1. parents/caregivers/teacher (including male family, grandparents, and community members) knowledge, skill and practice of nurturing care

Purpose of Activity/Assignment:

The MoHFW has committed to strengthen integrated ECCD. Some of OPs have clear activities for ECCD. Under the National Newborn Health Programme (NNHP), strengthening IMCI and Newborn services is one key priorities. One of key actions is improving the essential newborn care, small and sick newborn and Paediatric Quality of Care, in collaboration with nutrition services such as Growth Monitoring and Promotion, counseling and support for infant feeding under the National Nutrition Services Operational Plan.

ECCD nurturing care is a new focus area of MoHFW but MoHFW has committed to strengthen ECCD through a holistic and collaborative approach. One of key prioritized action toward strengthened enabling environment for integrated ECCD is development capacity of health care providers to provide integrated newborn, IMCI, nutrition services and ECCD. There is a need to strengthen capacity building materials for newborn, IMCI and nutrition services at health facilities with ECCD nurturing care. Therefore, Line Directorate of Maternal Newborn Child and Adolescent Health and Line Director of National Nutrition Services (NNS) identified the prioritized and urgent needs to develop a comprehensive training module, job-aids and tools for health care providers.

As urgent basis, the development a comprehensive training module, job-aids and tools for health care providers needs to be completed within maximum of 1-month. However, the consultant will hell to develop a strategy and draft action plans for a comprehensive and systematic approach to strengthen ECCD within the MoHFW and ToR for committee/working group to develop action plans for ECCD for the next 4-5 years (aligned with health sector plan, relevant Ops). The consultant will also need to draft outline for the contextualized national guidelines of ECCD for MoHFW.

Major Tasks/Assignment:

Tasks/Milestones

Deliverables/Outputs:

Timeframe

(Payment Schedule - %)

  1. List and the existing ECCD related training manuals and materials collected
  2. Conduct and facilitate consultation workshops to develop a comprehensive ECCD training module, job-aids and tools for health care providers, following the nurturing care strategy and WHO Guidelines
  3. Work with government partners(NNHP&IMCI, NNS) and relevant professional bodies (BPA, BNF) and DPs to develop ToR for committee/working group to develop strategy and draft action plans for integrated ECCD for the next 4-5 yrs (aligned with health sector plan, relevant OPs)

  4. Workplan for consultancy with clear objectives, strategies/methods and detailed Gantt Chart developed (remotely)

4 days (within one week after contract signed) – 5%

  1. ToR for committee/working group to develop strategy and draft action plan for integrated ECCD for the next 4-5yrs

8 days (within 3 weeks after contract signed) – 10%

  1. Revise ECCD training module, job-aids and tools for health care providers;
  2. Present the final draft of ECCD training module, job-aids and tools for health care providers to approval committee;
  3. Finalize ECCD training module, job-aids and tools for health care providers;

  4. Comprehensive training module and materials for ECCD nurturing care for health care providers (including job-aids to counsel parents on nurturing care)

16 days (1.5 months after contract signed) – 20%

  1. Conduct ToT for health care providers on comprehensive ECCD training module, job-aids and tools;

  2. ToT report and recommendations to improve training materials

8 days (2.5 months after contract signed) – 10%

  1. Conduct and facilitate workshops among committee/working group to develop strategy and draft action plans for ECCD for a comprehensive and systematic approach to strengthen integrated ECCD within MoHFW (including recommendations for coordination with MoWCA) and to develop outline for a comprehensive National ECCD guidelines, aligned with global and existing relevant national policies
  2. Present the strategy and draft action plans for integrated ECCD and proposed outline for national ECCD guidelines to the approval committee;
  3. Revise and finalize strategy for a comprehensive and systematic approach to strengthen ECCD within MoHFW and outline for national ECCD guidelines;

  4. Strategy document for integrated ECCD for the next 4-5 years

30 days (4.5 months after contract signed) – 37.5%

  1. Revise draft action plan integrated ECCD

  2. Draft action plan for integrated ECCD for the next 4-5 years

8 days (5 months after contract signed) – 10%

  1. Revise draft outline for contextualized national ECCD guidelines

  2. Draft outline for a comprehensive contextualised National ECCD Guidelines, aligned with Global and existing national policies

7 days (at the end of contract) – 8.75%

Knowledge/Expertise/Skills required:

  • Advanced university degree in education, communication, journalism, social sciences, International development, public health, early childhood development or related fields.
  • At least 10 years of experience and demonstrated experience in early childhood development, including nurturing care strategy and care for child development approach.
  • Experience working with multi stakeholders, particularly government partners. Excellent English writing, editing and presentation and skills.
  • Excellent time and project management skills.
  • Experience of working with UN Agencies, or other donor organizations
  • Familiarity with UNICEF programmes (Nutrition, Health, WASH, Social protection, Child protection, Education) will be a strong asset.
  • Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergency is considered an asset.
  • Fluency in English is required.

[1] The Lifecycle Benefits of an Influential Early Childhood Program, James Heckman

[2] World Health Organization, United Nations Children’s Fund, World Bank Group. Nurturing care for early childhood development: a strategy for helping children survive and thrive to transform health and human potential. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2018.

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UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.

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.

Added 3 years ago - Updated 2 years ago - Source: unicef.org

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