Consultancy Pool, Reproductive Maternal Newborn and Child Health (RMNCH) Country Engagement Facilitators

Job Description

Terms of Reference

Consultancy Pool

Reproductive Maternal Newborn and Child Health (RMNCH) Country Engagement Facilitators

Background:

While recent years have witnessed major reductions in death and disability from HIV, TB, malaria as well as vaccine preventable illness, a range of conditions continue to hamper progress in maternal and child health. Improving access to high quality pregnancy-related services including safe deliveries can reduce maternal and newborn deaths, while addressing pneumonia, diarrhoea and undernutrition can deepen child survival gains. Finally, access to family planning can both reduce the frequency of adverse pregnancy outcomes while optimizing birth spacing and child health.

To support these wider efforts across the RMNCH continuum, a range of new initiatives have emerged over the past several years under the UN Secretary-General’s Global Strategy for Women and Children’s Health, and the Every Women Every Child (EWEC) Movement. These include the G8 Muskoka Initiative, Family Planning 2020, A Promise Renewed, the Global Newborn Action Plan, the Commission on Information and Accountability (CoIA) and the UN Commission on Life-Saving Commodities for Women and Children (UNCoLSC). The World Bank’s Health Results Innovation Trust Fund is also a key supportive initiative.

To further these goals a global coordinating mechanism – the RMNCH Steering Committee – has been established to more closely harmonize and align various funding streams and activities. This Steering Committee is supported by a Strategy and Coordination Team (SCT) comprised of representatives from UNICEF, WHO and UNFPA. An RMNCH Coordinated Country Engagement process has emerged from this Steering Committee as a high-level partnership between participating UN agencies, major development partners and interested countries to better coordinate technical and financial flows. The broad objectives of this effort are to optimize the alignment of RMNCH initiatives/plans/strategies/priorities with new and existing funding streams, foster synergies between programs, reduce transaction costs to Ministries, simplify reporting mechanisms and accelerate progress towards the health MDGs.

An initial group of 20 countries has been identified where the burden of disease is high and where opportunities for greater coordination of resource streams exist. The initial priority countries are primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. The Country Engagement process is led by the Ministry of Health with the support of H4+ Teams and in-country partners. In each country, a ‘Facilitating Agency’ is being appointed to act as the primary entry point and coordination mechanism for contacts with the Ministry and related partners in this effort.

Purpose:

Initial discussions with countries and global partners have already highlighted the fact that the RMNCH Country Engagement process, while locally driven, would benefit from a dedicated resource that could facilitate and steward the process, working under the guidance and leadership of the Ministry of Health and the in-country ‘facilitating’ agency.

In order to make such resources available to countries as needed, a pool of Country Engagement Facilitators is being established by the SCT. This pool of consultants will be deployed rapidly and flexibly to work with countries, H4+ teams and partners to support the RMNCH Country Engagement process, at the request of countries.

Country Engagement facilitators must be proficient in a range of skill-sets. They must:

• • Be seen as ‘neutral brokers’;
• • Rapidly understand the global aid architecture, national RMNCH landscape and work across key stakeholders, including government, development partners and civil society;
• • Have a strategic perspective and ability to articulate how the various initiatives, strategies and in-country process interact and inter-relate;
• • Facilitate discussions, debates, and brainstorming sessions with multiple stakeholders;
• • Quickly grasp and synthesize large amounts of programmatic and financial information ;
• • Rapidly understands the various financing channels, domestic and external, and their particularities relevant to a given country;
• • Work with a deep sense of urgency, diligence, attention to detail and quality
• • Importantly, they must be able to work effectively with and through existing H4+ and MOH counterparts to further in-country capacity to harness the perspectives and skill sets for managing the coordinated RMCH engagement process going forward

Expected results / deliverables:

Their specific roles and responsibilities may vary from country to country depending on the specific needs of the country; and these would be defined at the start of the engagement.

It is anticipated that in general, the consultant will:

• • Be responsible for ensuring the quality completion of the main components of the RMNCH Country Engagement process, in close coordination with the lead UN facilitating Agency in-country
• • Facilitate discussions, debates, and brainstorming sessions with multiple stakeholders
• • Review and prioritize existing strategies, national plans, latest epidemiological data and status of the RMNCH enabling environment and key bottlenecks to apply a specific RMNCH commodity-lens to the bottleneck analysis
• • After a review of available RMNCH financial resources in-country and any gaps, engage in discussions for possible new funding from domestic sources.
• • Perform programmatic and financial gap analysis, show its expected impact on progress towards MDGs 4 & 5, and make recommendations.

A more detailed picture of the RMNCH Country Engagement process is shown in attached Annex.

More specific and detailed deliverables and their deadlines will vary according to each consultancy based on country needs.

Timeframe:

As this process is intended to draw from existing plans and mapping exercises, it is envisioned that the time required to support in-country process could be quite short. It is anticipated that for each country they will need 5 weeks of work, with 2-3 weeks in country which includes travel and accommodation, with additional remote support as needed.

Duration of contract (start & end dates) will vary according to each consultancy based on specific country needs. We are expecting this work to be initiated in the 1^st quarter of 2014, and extend to target countries during 2014-2015.

Key competences, technical background, and experience required:

The Country Engagement Facilitators will be comprised of a pool of public health and management consultants. They would undergo one week of training by the SCT (with support from global H4+ partners) in preparation for their deployment. The minimum requirements for members of this pool include:

• • A Master’s Degree in Public Health, Business or a related discipline
• • A solid grounding in RMNCH issues with 3-5 years of field experience, preferably in a high-burden country. Candidates with previous project design experience and work with Ministries or with bi-lateral/multi-lateral agencies would be preferred.
• • Strong evidence of teamwork and facilitation skills. Experience working with Ministries and RMNCH partner organizations would be an asset
• • Management consulting experience, in particular with in non-profit organizations or in development settings, would be a strong asset
• • High levels of computer literacy including quantitative/analytical skills and advanced proficiency with MS Excel
• • Demonstrated technical writing ability
• • Working knowledge of English is required. Proficiency in both English and French preferred.

6. Duty Station:

The consultant will be based remotely, and will be asked to travel to one or more of the 20 countries for in-country support.

How to Apply:

Qualified candidates are requested to submit a cover letter, CV and P 11 form (which can be downloaded from our website at http://www.unicef.org/about/employ/index_53129.html) to pdconsultants@unicef.org with subject line “Consultant Pool for Reproductive Maternal Newborn and Child Health (RMNCH) Country Engagement Facilitators” by 13 January 2014, 5:00pm EST. Please indicate your ability, availability and daily/monthly rate to undertake the terms of reference above. Applications submitted without a daily/monthly rate will not be considered.

Joint applications will not be accepted

Annex on RMNCH Country Engagement Process Steps

1. Initial communication:
• One of the RMNCH development partners will act as ‘focal point’ to initiate the process with the Ministry of Health. This involves a written communication to the Minister of Health explaining the context and intention of the Country Engagement process and inviting the MOH and partners to further discuss this in a conference call or a joint mission/meeting. Attached to the letter is the Country Engagement Process document.
• This will be supported by internal communication within the development partner agencies to ensure that there is a shared understanding and consistent message about the purpose and objective of this engagement.
2. Definition of scope of the Country Engagement process:

• The scope of engagement refers to the identification of key national partners, processes and funding channels within the RMNCH. This includes identifying on-going or up-coming processes relevant to RMNCH, key funding opportunities, establishing where various national plans and gap analyses standand where additional sharpening or further analysis may be required.
• A short workplanfor how to most strategically bring these components together would be the outcome of this step. Roles and responsibilities of various in-country stakeholders would be made clear, including potential needs for additional technical and/or managerial support. Countries with established coordinating mechanisms who are well advanced in the process may require less additional effort.
  • An RMNCH Landscape synthesis would include reviewing existing strategies and national plan(s), as needed; synthesizing and reviewing latest epidemiological data and progress to date; and better understanding the status of the RMNCH enabling environment and key bottlenecks. This is not about doing additional assessment work, but rather about bringing together and prioritizing information that already exists. This would also include applying a specific RMNCH commodity-lens to the bottleneck analysis.
  • Financial gaps: In many cases, additional work may be needed to better understand the financial resources already available for RMNCH at country level in order to refine the gap analysis, reduce possible inefficiencies and overlaps and most effectively apply potential new funding. As part of this, discussions about increasing domestic sources of funding must also take place.

1. Landscape synthesis^[1].

1. Articulation of the full RMNCH gap and its prioritization. The above synthesis should be articulated in a short gap analysis that would provide:

ü A brief recap of the situation analysis or landscape synthesis

ü A brief summary major programmatic and financial gaps, and their prioritization

ü An indication for how existing or new funding streams can be used to meet this prioritized gap or need

ü The expected impact on progress towards MDGs 4 & 5

1. Accessing funding. This gap analysis would form the basis of discussions at the global and country levels, including the RMNCH Steering Committee, regarding how to mobilize and align new and existing resources to address key RMNCH priorities in a coordinated manner.

[1]A number of tools are available for countries to use and/or adapt to facilitate this, if not already done (these tools are compiled in an RMNCH Toolkit that PMNCH has been establishing).

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