PSS Assistant - Akkar (2 positions)

Job Overview/Summary: The Child Protection Assistants are responsible for facilitating the empowerment of vulnerable children throughout Lebanon through facilitating child participation and leadership in the management of IRCs Safe Healing and Learning Spaces. The Child Protection Assistants will be responsible for organizing creative daily psychosocial services for children who are at risk of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation, this includes children who are out of school, children who are at risk of being forced into labour and/or children exploited in the worst forms of child labor. The CP Assistants will be responsible for overseeing the implementation of healing activities for at risk children at IRCs Safe Healing and Learning Space. This will involve designing activities and sessions that engage and empower children as agents of change in their communities and municipalities. CP Assistants will be directly responsible for rolling out IRCs Child Safeguarding Policy in the center to volunteers, children, and other IRC Programs- to ensure that IRC and its affiliates are accountable to children on a daily basis.

The CP Assistants will be responsible for conducting activities which include: community based psychosocial support sessions, specialized life skills sessions, activities which promote Social and Emotional Learning, Parenting skills sessions for caregivers of working children which promote positive parenting & decreasing violence in the home.

Child Protection assistants are responsible for supporting children to lead activities and events in a meaningful way – this will involve engaging children in a structured conversation in event planning, supporting them to identify the Protection issues in their communities and approaches to use to highlight their concerns and proposed solution.

The CP Assistants-performance management will be linked to how well support and engaged vulnerable children feel to lead special events throughout the year. CP Assistants will be working on identifying high risk cases and accordingly referring to case workers, as well as children and families who can benefit from other service provisions and learning activities. The Assistant will be overlooking the running of the Safe Healing and Learning Space, to ensure activities are as per IRC and CP standards. A significant component of the CP Assistant’s role is to work with the Senior Child Protection Officer to update and maintain relevant reporting requirements for the program: weekly sitreps, weekly plans, trends and patterns of street and working children, as well as activity evaluation sheets.  Cases that do not fall under child protection criteria may be accompanied by PSS assistants to access relevant services accordingly. For the majority of the reporting requirements the PSS assistants will be responsible for coordinating closely with the MEAL Officer and Senior CP Officer. For all case coordination the main focal points include- the Case Management Senior Officer, Senior CP Officer, case workers.

Who this position reports to:

Senior CP Officer

Major Responsibilities:

Child Participation & Accountability:

• Organise weekly activities that engage at risk and vulnerable children to become agents of change in their communities and empower them to express their needs;
• Ensure children reached through IRCs outreach work and the SHLS know IRC’s hotline, have access to the complaints and feedback mechanism;
• Implement IRCs outreach strategy ensuring we are always targeting the most vulnerable and at risk children who would otherwise not be able to access services &/or information;
• Systematically conduct training and info sessions on IRCs Child Safeguarding Policy to children, colleagues and visitors to the IRC Safe Healing and Learning Space – ensure all visitors and adults attending the center are aware & have signed the policy;

Outreach and Safe Healing & Learning Spaces-

• Create a warm, welcoming and inclusive environment for children who attend IRC activities to feel safe;
• Oversee smooth running of the Safe Healing and Learning Space, report challenges & propose solutions;
• Organise and conduct psychosocial activities on a daily basis that are engaging and healing for- children involved in worst forms of child labor, out of school and/or at risk of dropping out;
• Develop a work plan to conduct community initiatives with vulnerable and at risk working children for the whole project time frame- follow up and monitor this work plan systematically;
• Assume full responsibility to conduct pre/post questionnaires in all locations of the specific intervention-following standardized protocols accordingly and ensure reporting is completed on a timely basis;
• Conduct life skills sessions for youths & coordinate with other locations to promote systematic community initiatives led by minors as per the life skills intervention- document these cases well;
• Conduct Parenting skills sessions for SaWC caregivers and other caregivers of at risk children;
• Support the Senior CP Officer in following up on apprenticeship schemes for the youths
• Train, coach and support  CP Volunteers on child protection & support quality program implementation through providing support and empowering volunteers;

Access to services:

• Systematically disseminate information related to services, protection concerns & promote wellbeing of clients through well-organized information sessions and facilitating referrals (when needed);
• Ensure families of street and working children-have access disseminate information, materials and NFI’s as and when required;
• Conduct regular joint sessions with colleagues from the following IRC teams - Protection, Economic Recovery & Development, Women’s Protection & Empowerment and Education colleagues to conduct joint awareness sessions on issues such as birth registration, legal residency,
• Assume full responsibility to identify & refer high risk cases to CP Case management, and/or other cases to protection, education, ERD (where possible) and WPE- Maintain relevant documentation related to monitoring referrals and services reached;  
• Provide support to at risk children & their families to external agencies to facilitate access to service provision;
• Identify and refer cases of children involved in worst forms of child labor, and children at high risk of harm to the case management team;
• Identify and refer cases of children involved in worst forms of child labor/caregivers eligible for training and development opportunities;
• Set up a weekly plan for SHLS activities as per program targets and strategies

Monitoring and Evaluation Responsibilities:

• Ensure full responsibility for the monitoring and reporting of the M & E tasks of the psychosocial intervention & beneficiary feedback mechanism- when delays occur flag concerns/challenges;
• Assume full responsibility for Documenting Trends & Incidents related to SaWC on a weekly basis;
• Systematically organize and document data related to activity evaluation forms, trend forms, Sitrep on a weekly/monthly basis & other tools on a daily basis;
• Document activities and or incidents that are beneficial for IRC to learn from;
• Take photos of activities and events when needed- maintain a filing system which includes the Consent form;

Other

• Other duties as assigned by the supervisor to enable and develop IRC programs;
• Maintain good team spirit, coordinate closely with other departments to provide the best services for vulnerable children; ;

Professional Standards

• All IRC staff are required to adhere to THE IRC Way Standards for Professional Conduct, IRCs Child Safeguarding Policy, and the IRC country employment policies.

Key Working Relationships:

• Position Reports to:  Senior CP Officer;
• Position directly supervises: Facilitators, volunteers, street and working youths;
• Indirect Reporting: CP SaWC Manager Tripoli or Mount Lebanon

Job Requirements:

• Staunch Advocate of Child Rights
• Support of Child Participation as agents of change in their communities;
• Technical diploma or degree in non formal education, animation, social work  or related degree preferred;
• Experience in conducting psychosocial activities for children;
• Reporting and database entry skills (basic Microsoft word and excel);
• Proven experience working in challenging situation;
• Experience in working with children (mandatory);
• Experience in working with street and working children preferable
• Experience in working for an NGO/ humanitarian organization preferable
• Personal qualities: communicative, flexible, network-builder, able to handle pressure well and work in cross-cultural setting.
• Fluency in written and spoken Arabic, English speaking is a plus 
• Staunch advocate of Child protection, Child rights & Child Safeguarding.