Early Childhood Intervention Consultant

UNICEF Serbia is seeking Early Childhood Intervention consultant. Duration of the assignment is in the period from June 2017 to December 2017, with a total number of 36 working days.

 

Purpose of Activity/Assignment:

The provision of ECI services help ensure fulfilment of internationally-mandated child rights (CRC, 1989) and they also meet essential requirements of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD, 2006). ECI is an inter-sectoral, interdisciplinary, integrated and coordinated system of services for young children with developmental delays, disabilities, behavioral difficulties, social and emotional challenges, or for young children who are very likely to develop a delay before school entry due to malnutrition, chronic illness or other biological or environmental factors. Services for children should be based on the family's priorities and the child's needs and should be delivered in the child's natural environment such as the home, at primary health care center, an inclusive childcare center, kindergarten, community center, play-group, or other settings where children without disabilities can be found.  When the children are under the age of three, the ECI provider guides and coaches the parent or other family members. When the child is in an inclusive early education center the ECI provider models and coaches the teacher on how to support the child’s development. Research has shown ECI services must be sufficient in duration and intensity to be of optimal benefit.  Service providers in developed countries moved from working one-to-one with children to working with the adults who spend the most time with the children like parents, teachers and other service providers.

Unfortunately, service delivery models in Serbia are clinically oriented and fragmented by discipline. While professionals are often co-located in the same building they individually serve children and monitor their progress without cross-collaboration during assessment or intervention delivery. The processes and instruments are not standardized and assessment does not lead to development of one comprehensive support plan for one child (family). The parent’s role is limited to transporting the child to and from the various appointments.

In order to identify national needs for ECI services but also any other type of support to children with developmental difficulties and disabilities and their families, countries need good data. Data should be gathered based on the comprehensive assessment of child development, his/her functionality and family and environmental capacities to support his/her development.

The following systems/processes have to be in place (cross-sectorially) in order to provide comprehensive support to the family with children with developmental difficulties: early developmental assessment that would inform one plan for one child and a family, which will be addressed through a (network of) evidence based ECI services. In the same time reporting system on the national level (registry) is needed to guide policy planning and budgeting. In 2015/16, UNICEF has initiated serious of inter-sectorial discussions on these issues which concluded with recommendations that call upon operationalization of these processes.

One of the recognized (or potential) ECI services in Serbia are developmental counselling units (DCU) in the primary health care centers – multidisciplinary teams of service providers that provide support to children with developmental risk and difficulties and disabilities. 9 DCUs in Serbia were capacitated in the previous two years bringing forward number of lessons learnt for organising their quality work.  In order to support their establishment nationwide a manual for DCUs is being produced with instructions for its day to day work. In order to finalise this manual there is a need to develop model of individual support plan for a child and the family based on international experience and national cross-sectorial needs as well as evidence based instructions for provision of ECI.  Plan should contain information on developmental assessment, developmental goals and interventions, timelines as well as roles and responsibilities such as information about who is initiating plan development, who is conducting/implementing particular elements of the plan, who is case manager, who is monitoring the plan delivery etc. When it comes to ECI service providers, there is a need to overcome current state of the art and to build capacities of ECI providers in the areas: methodology of how all developmental domains of a child are assessed (in-depth), how individual development goals are made, how to conduct interventions and regularly progress and monitor achievement, how to make and regularly update individual plan for a child and the family. There is a plan to train core team of providers that would further implement the ECI services in/from their institutions (secondary and primary health care and pre-schools) and serve as models of good practice for other services. In the same time “Manual for Inclusive Classroom / Top Ten Tactics on Educational Inclusion” needs to be developed/finalised to complement and co-ordinate the work of DCUs and home based ECI services. 

Currently, Open Society Foundations Early Childhood Program (ECP) and UNICEF are in the final stage of the research “Situation analysis of current policy and practices in Serbia for meeting the needs of young children at risk of developmental delays and with disabilities, and assessment of policy opportunities and capacities of system services for establishing and supporting the Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) System and/or the implementation of time-limited pilot services in specific ECI sites”. Aim of the research is to obtain the latest evidence about the ECI field in Serbia, which will guide strategic development in the ECI area and decision making about the future choices of concrete programmatic interventions that could be relevant for the Serbian context for all stakeholders, including UNICEF and partners. There is a need to provide peer review of the research report.

In order to strengthen data availability, Government has endorsed a law that envisions establishment of registry of children with developmental difficulties and disabilities. During 2016, UNICEF has supported Institute of Public Health of Serbia to identify core items in the registry that would align it with International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health for Children and Youth - ICF-CY. In order to operationalize registry there is a need to develop methodological guide, and over all the guide/instruments for assessing child development and functioning that would support in the same time development of individual plan for ECI and population of the registry informing national policy and budget planning.

Under the leadership of UNICEF professionals and in collaboration with UNICEF partner organizations the consultant should support quality improvement of the ECI capacities in Serbia through:

1. Providing technical support for development of ECI response and services in Serbia through different sectors and cross-sectorially (finalization of framework for individual support plan for a child and the family,  evidence based instructions for provision of ECI, review and contribution to relevant ECI documents/guides etc.) and

2. Supporting capacity building of the health and education systems to implement new methods in providing ECI for children with developmental difficulties.

3. Providing technical support to the working group operationalizing the Registry of Children with Developmental Difficulties and Disability

 

Start Date:

June 2017    

End Date:

December 2017      

Number of working days/months

36 days in 7 months

Work Assignment Overview

Task: Provide peer review of the ECI research report

Deliverables: ECI report with comments and one pager peer-review

Timeframe: June 2017 (2 days)

 

Task:  Develoment  of model for individual support plan for a child and the family in consultative manner with stakeholders from Serbia

Deliverables: The plan with instructions for use

Timeframe: June (3 days)

 

Task:  Technical input and review of the Guide for the Developmental Counceling Units with evidence based instructions for provision of ECI

Deliverables: The Guide on DCUs

Timeframe: September (4 days)

 

Task: Technically support key expert of the Institute of Public Health working group tasked to develop methodological guide for the National registry of children with disabilities, in particular for the development/selection of assessment instruments

Deliverable: Set of assessment instruments with instructions and criteria and benchmarks for entering data into registry

Timeframe: June – December (10 days)

 

Task: Finalisation of the Manual for inclusive pre-school classroom and  Peer review of the Guidelines for inclusion in pre-school education

Deliverables: Finalised Manual and written inputs for peer review of the Guidelines provided

Timeframe: June-August (5 days)

 

Task: Conduct advanced training on ECI (ToT) with key selected practitioners - definition, importance, and delivery of multidisciplinary, evidence-based approach to stimulating development and learning of children with developmental difficulties with follow up and mentoring face to face and on-line.

Deliverables:  Training scenario, training report, ppts from the training.

Timeframe: September – December (total of 12 days - 2 days preparation, 5 days training face to face in Serbia, 5 days for follow up and monitoring)

 

Minimum Qualifications required:

• PhD in psychology or related fields and university affiliation.
• Minimum 5 years of experience in assessing, stimulating and monitoring development of children with developmental difficulties and their families.        Knowledge/Expertise/Skills required:

- Proven results of the work with children and their families, recognized from the academia, verified by published research/articles.

- Experience in supporting policy changes and programme development on ECD/ECI in the region

- Knowledge and experience in the implementation of the CABAS method.

- Knowledge of inclusive education and ability to present successful models of inter-sectorial collaboration in ECI provision for social inclusion from the region and abroad.

- Training skills (academic and practical skills) in ECI and experience in training health professionals and their associates (regional experience preferred)

- Familiarity with the ECD/ECI interventions in Serbia, as well as of education inclusion process in Serbia.

- Familiarity with UNICEF programmes that support ECD/ECI (for visiting nurses, developmental pediatrics, early interventions)

- Ability to adapt international experience to the Serbian context.

- Work experience with UN and/or other international organizations would be considered as an advantage.

-.Fluency in English.

- Knowledge of written and spoken Serbian language.

         

 

The application must include the following:

1. Daily rate (all travel related costs: transport, accommodation, DSA etc. to be included)
2. CV 

 

Important note: Incomplete applications will not be taken into consideration.

 

Only short-listed candidates will be contacted. UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages qualified female and male candidates from all national, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities to apply.