Programme Officer – Adolescent Cash Plus Programme

UNICEF, also known as the United Nations Children's Fund, is a United Nations agency responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide. The agency is among the most widespread and recognizable social welfare organizations in the world, with a presence in 192 countries and territories. UNICEF's activities include providing immunizations and disease prevention, administering treatment for children and mothers with HIV, enhancing childhood and maternal nutrition, improving sanitation, promoting education, and providing emergency relief in response to disasters.

The Government of Kenya, through SDCS, is implementing the Adolescent Cash Plus component under the Second Kenya Social and Economic Inclusion Programme. UNICEF Kenya is providing technical assistance to strengthen implementation, quality assurance and sustainability across Bungoma, Homa Bay, Kilifi, Mandera, Marsabit, Migori, Nairobi, Samburu and Wajir counties. The programme will be implemented in a staggered approach, starting with Wajir, Samburu, Kilifi, Homabay and Nairobi.

The programme aims to support poor and vulnerable households with adolescents to remain in or re-enter school, reduce adolescent pregnancy, improve adolescent wellbeing and strengthen access to integrated social services. The cash transfer component is complemented by a “plus” package that includes establishment and management of adolescent safe spaces, provision of life skills and light touch entrepreneurship, positive parenting, safeguarding, case management, psychosocial support, school attendance monitoring, social behaviour change, referrals and linkages to other relevant services.

The UN Volunteer will provide county-level technical and operational support to SDCS, for the government to be able to roll out the integrated safe spaces curriculum, support implementing partners as necessary, strengthen programme management and monitoring, and facilitate referral of adolescents to complementary cash plus interventions, including child protection, health, education, psychosocial support, positive parenting, disability inclusion, TVET and livelihoods services.

Under the overall guidance of the designated UNICEF Kenya supervisor [LH2.1] and in close coordination with the UNICEF Child Protection, Social Policy, Adolescent Development and Participation, Gender and Social Behaviour Change teams , SDCS, relevant county government departments, implementing partners and community structures, the UN Volunteer will support the following tasks:

• Support SDCS and county teams to plan, coordinate and monitor county-level implementation of the Adolescent Cash Plus programme, including work planning, action tracking, meeting documentation, bottleneck follow-up and timely escalation of implementation issues.
• Support operationalization and implementation of the integrated adolescent safe spaces , including facilitator guides, job aids, quality checklists, attendance tools, safeguarding protocols, referral tools, reporting templates and learning materials.
• Provide practical implementation support to Children Officers, Child Protection Volunteers, safe space facilitators and community structures to deliver adolescent safe spaces, life skills, positive parenting linkages, social behaviour change activities and adolescent participation processes in line with approved standards.
• Support implementing partners (CSOs) to align workplans, budgets, Programme Documents, training plans, reporting schedules and field-level activities with the Adolescent Cash Plus programme design, UNICEF procedures, donor commitments and SDCS priorities.
• Facilitate coordination between SDCS, county departments responsible for children services, education, health, gender, youth, social protection and relevant community structures to strengthen multisectoral referral pathways and local ownership of the programme.
• Support identification and referral of adolescents and households requiring complementary cash plus interventions, including child protection case management, psychosocial support, health and Social Health Authority linkages, school re-entry support, disability inclusion services, parenting support, gender-based violence response, TVET, livelihoods or other locally available services.
• Maintain and periodically update county service directories, referral pathway maps and non-identifying referral-tracking tools, ensuring that confidentiality, informed consent or assent, data protection and do-no-harm principles are observed.
• Support programme monitoring, supportive supervision and quality assurance visits to safe spaces and related programme sites, documenting progress, service gaps, safeguarding risks, partner capacity needs, referral bottlenecks and recommended follow-up actions.
• Assist SDCS and UNICEF to strengthen programme management systems, including implementation trackers, county dashboards, training databases, field monitoring templates, supervision checklists, issue logs, partner follow-up matrices and monthly update notes.
• Contribute to capacity building, coaching and mentoring of frontline workers, partner staff and community actors on adolescent engagement, safe space facilitation, safeguarding, PSEA, referrals, case management linkages, disability inclusion, MHPSS-sensitive practice and documentation standards.
• Prepare concise technical updates, field visit reports, meeting notes, training summaries, action trackers, inputs to donor and programme briefs and reports, presentations and documentation of lessons learned and promising practices, ensuring that sensitive case information is not disclosed in routine reports.
• Support peer learning, county exchange, community feedback and adolescent participation activities to inform adaptive implementation and continuous improvement of the Adolescent Cash Plus programme.
• Other support as may be necessary to help ensure effective implementation of the Adolescent Cash Plus programme (e.g. helping to resolve bottlenecks at county or sub-county level including other aspects of the programme).