Child Protection Specialist (Alternative Care)

For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children's survival, protection and development. The world's largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and Governments.

The UNICEF programme in Tanzania prioritizes the monitoring of emerging trends and their impact on children, the country’s development landscape and use of evidence and successful pilots to leverage investments and wider coverage of quality services for children. The pro-gramme also aims to strengthen children’s and communities’ engagement in their own devel-opment. In Tanzania, UNICEF supports programmes in health, nutrition, HIV/AIDS, education, child protection and water and sanitation. Cross-cutting priorities include social policy, budgeting and financing, gender, behavioral change, communication and partnerships.
The assignment for the national UNV will be in the Child Protection section in UNICEF Tanza-nia. Since 2009, UNICEF has been supporting the Government to strengthen the social welfare and justice services and to develop a comprehensive child protection system for every child in Tanzania. The Child Protection programme also has a focus on supporting the Government to reform Alternative Care and move from institutional to family-based care and protection. The Child Protection programme focuses on supporting the implementation of the government’s second National Plan of Action to end Violence Against Women and Children (NPA-VAWC II) 2024/2025 – 2028/2029, as well as reform of the Alternative Care system. The overall objective of the Child Protection programme is to ensure that - children have access to and are better served by a national protection system that prevents and responds to violence and harmful social practices.

The Child Protection Specialist will report to the Child Protection Specialist in Dodoma for supervision. The Child Protection Specialist will lead a variety of technical and administrative programme tasks to facilitate programme development, implementation, programme progress monitoring, evaluating and reporting. Key functions/accountabilities are as follows:
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Provide technical support to the government to develop and implement the alterna-tive care programme, with an emphasis on the promotion of family based alternative care and the deinstitutionalization of children.
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Promote the needs of children with a disability within the overall process of alternative care reform.
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Support the work on strengthening the social welfare workforce (including capacity building of Social Welfare Officers) and implementation of the Social Welfare Roadmap.
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Support the cross-sectoral work on inclusion for children with a disability.
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Support child protection system strengthening and care reform in UNICEF focus regions including budgeting and planning with the local and national government, managing funding requests, reporting by the government, field monitoring visits, monitoring fund utilization etc.

Furthermore, UN Volunteers are required to:

Strengthen their knowledge and understanding of the concept of volunteerism by reading relevant UNV and external publications and take active part in UNV activities (for instance in events that mark IVD);

Be acquainted with and build on traditional and/or local forms of volunteerism in the host country;
Reflect on the type and quality of voluntary action that they are undertaking, including participation in ongoing reflection activities;

Contribute articles/write-ups on field experiences and submit them for UNV publica-tions/websites, newsletters, press releases, etc.;

Assist with the UNV Buddy Programme for newly-arrived UN Volunteers;

Promote or advise local groups in the use of online volunteering, or encourage relevant local individuals and organizations to use the UNV Online Volunteering service whenever technically possible.