Evaluation Consultant for Case Management Coaching Programme - Beirut

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. Founded in 1933, the IRC offers life-saving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war or disaster. At work today in more than 40 countries and in 22 cities in the United States, the IRC restores safety, dignity, and hope to millions of vulnerable individuals who are uprooted by conflict or disaster. The IRC leads the way from harm to home.

Child protection (CP):

The situation for Syrian refugee children in Lebanon remains dire, as children continue to face significant barriers to access their basic inalienable rights such as safety, education and birth registration.

Refugee children, as well as vulnerable host community children, are facing complex CP issues in Lebanon, these range from e.g. child labor and exploitation, child marriage, neglect, family separation, abuse, including sexual violence, psychosocial and mental health issues. Almost one in four reported cases of SGBV involves a child, and 65 percent of Syrian, 57 percent of Lebanese, 82 percent of Palestinian Refugees from Lebanon and 77 percent of Palestinian Refugees from Syria children aged 1-14 years are subjected to at least one form of violent discipline in their homes.

The IRC CP team works to improve the protection of children in Lebanon through supporting the capacity development of CP service providers to provide quality case management services and strengthen community-based protection mechanisms for children at risk, as well as working directly with children and youth at risk and their families.

The Inter-agency Child Protection Coaching Program started in the 4rth quarter of 2013 and aims to reinforce and strengthen the ability of the Government of Lebanon (GoL), international and local actors to respond to incidents of child abuse, affecting both refugee and host community populations in Lebanon.

The broader goal of the Inter-agency Child Protection Coaching Program is to support the CP system building initiatives by promoting best practices and strengthening the processes, networks and tools that have been put in place, and to increasingly focus on engaging with institutional actors in order to strengthen the ability of the GoL to respond to incidents of child abuse.

The program created a strong network of child protection case management actors in Lebanon who were trained and supported on global best practices and National SOPs in order to raise the quality of services received by vulnerable children and their families in Lebanon.

Since its inception in 2013 until July 2019, the program targeted around 1,500 participants providing various CP services across the country with different child protection trainings, from 82 agencies.

The program had a large and long term intervention and has contributed to the sector and Lebanese workforce over the years, and this needs to be well-documented and shared regionally and globally.

Women’s Protection and Empowerment (WPE):

In July 2012, IRC conducted an emergency GBV assessment in Lebanon that revealed increased risks of violence among women and girls due to the Syrian conflict. Since November 2012, the IRC Women’s Protection and Empowerment (WPE) program has established several static Women and Girls Community Centres (WGCCs) and mobile safe spaces in the North and Bekaa Valley.Within the safe spaces and community centres, the WPE Program aims at increasing access of women and girls to psychosocial and case management services and enable communities to identify and mitigate safety and security risks faced by women and girls. All programming is implemented using survivor-centred approaches that prioritize confidentiality, dignity, safety, and respect.

GBV case management coaching program aims to sustainably increase the capacity of individual service providers and the GBV systems at the national level in order to prevent and respond to GBV, with an explicit focus on remote and hard to reach locations. Project outcomes include:

• GBV prevention and response systems are sustained through pragmatic practitioner focused coaching and capacity building approaches
• GBV case management service providers are equipped with knowledge, skills and tools to provide supervision, capacity building and technical guidance to case workers and social workers
• Women and girls at risk, particularly GBV survivors, receive improved, appropriate and timely support from case management service providers, as a result of strengthened case management systems including improved referral mechanisms.
• Better understanding of GBV prevention strategies, particularly in remote and underserved areas.

Purpose and objectives of the end line evaluation

a.Purpose:

Based on the above, the IRC is seeking to carry out an evaluation of the outcomes and impact of the 5 year-Inter-agency Coaching Program and capture achievements, challenges and best practices to inform future similar programming. It will also set options and recommendations. The evaluation will also identify key lessons learned, challenges and the flexibility of the program to adapt and respond to the system needs.

Moreover, the program evaluation has a strategic interest and will help to identify how this model contributed to strengthen the Lebanese workforces over the years to respond to Child Protection and gender based violence needs in the country, which will help to use the findings for future programing and that could be replicated in other contexts. The evaluation will have an accountability aspect toward stakeholders and UNHCR as a donor and in another hand it will offer a learning opportunity for program improvement and development.

This will be focused on the following pillars:

• How did this program has contributed to strengthening the skills of key stakeholders concerned with the provision of case management for women and children during an emergency response into a protracted crisis
• What are the lessons learned including best practices, challenges and constraints that could be identified and or addressed.
•  What are the recommendations to enhance IRC’s coaching program and its effects in a sustainable way?

b.Objectives:

The evaluation will allow IRC and partners scaling up the program’s interventions based on the effectiveness, efficiency, coherence, relevance and connectedness of the used methodologies, approaches, and program implementation’s dynamics.

The evaluation will be at the levels of process, outcome, impact and sustainability to better understand where successes are being achieved, what is driving / undermining successes, social and system’s changes, and what measures could ensure sustainability of the interventions beyond the lifespan of the program.

By investing in this evaluation, the IRC will be able to:

• Demonstrate the added value of investing in this type of programming during an emergency response to protect refugee women and children,
• Demonstrate the added value of working on both formal and informal protection mechanisms in a streamlined manner,
• Analyze the overall contribution made to the country’s workforce which will inevitably further contribute to refugee women and children’s protection,
• Determine efficiency and effectiveness of the approaches used and the quality of implementation delivery model, to achieve the project outcome,
• Demonstrate accountability to stakeholders on achieving results,
• Verify whether the funds were used effectively and efficiently to deliver results (assessing Value for Money),
• Support evidence-based decision making for tailoring/scaling up/expanding interventions,
• Identify best practices in engaging the local social services workforces to response to the crisis and bridging humanitarian and national actors initiatives for CP and GBV system strengthening,
• Determine elements for sustainability of approaches and interventions in the project,
• Identify challenges, constraints encountered and mitigation measures taken at the different stages of the project and identify lessons learned and good practices,
• Propose options and recommendations for future similar interventions,
• Develop an overall useful report to be used for scaling up future approaches and be as useful reference and guidance for future program and for replicating this model in the same or other context.

Scope of the evaluation

The target audience for the evaluation includes key stakeholders as government, international donors, UN and local non-governmental organizations providing child protection and GBV services that have been targeted by the program since its inception.

The evaluation will take place over a period of 1 month 2 weeks, from 18 November until 31 December 2019. The consultant will be asked to account for diversity in this exercise – selecting interventions that have had more or less success achieving targets and end results.

The evaluation will cover key activities planned from October 2013 until July 2019, and will include 3 stages such as 1) inception phase and evaluation design, 2) field work, data collection and data analysis, 3) developing final evaluation report including options and recommendation.

1)Inception phase of the evaluation:

The consultant will:

• Carry out a preliminary communication to clarify terms of evaluation between the consultant and IRC.
• Carry our desk review of documents including project documents, training reports, assessment reports, annual reports, resource material, etc produced in the frame of the project.
• Hold meetings and interviews with IRC stakeholders and partners involved in the program. Meeting with donor representative is also envisaged.
• Set the evaluation design, objectives, methods and sampling approach matrix,
• Develop a theory of change diagram to provide useful overview of the cause and effect linkages or chains of linkages between the intervention and the desired end-result.
• Set criteria and checkpoints to ensure the quality of the evaluation at an earlier stage,
• Carry out consultative meeting, and seek feedback with IRC CP and WPE management at various quality checkpoints and when needed or requested by IRC,
• Set various type of evaluation questionnaires in line with the purpose, objectives and intended results. The questionnaires should be when appropriate leading to a) describe how the activity affected the stakeholder and targeted people, b)identify how the activity met the international standards, principles and guidelines, c) identify the causal of the effect and results, and assess the attribution or the contribution of the complexity of the system and humanitarian context to the results, d) evaluate the appropriateness of the implementation modalities, approaches, dynamics and policies adopted, e)and be action oriented, by stating what action could be taken in the future to enhance the program and improve the quality of services and support provided to the stakeholders.
• Set a number of questionnaire enough to meet the purpose of the evaluation in sufficient depth and make it useful, focusing on appropriateness, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, connectedness, coverage, coherence and coordination aspects of the activities and approaches,
• Provide a schedule of activities and traveling with a clear timeline,
• Determine the ethical boundaries for conducting the evaluation in line with international standards and principles,
• Pilot testing the data collection tools,
• Carry our initial field work visit to contextualize the set up on the inception phase,
• Present the evaluation design to IRC for discussion and approval.

2)Field work, data collection and data analysis:

The consultant will:

• Conduct surveys, interviews or other data collection methods: to solicit input from targeted stakeholders. Alternative or complementary approaches such as focus groups could be considered.
• Carry out statistical analysis for primary and secondary data, data cleaning, data entry, and validation of statistical tests, using quantitative and qualitative data,
• Process collected data on one of the following statistical packages (STATA, SPSS, cSPro),

3)Final evaluation report, options and recommendations:

The consultant will:

• Carry out consultancy meeting with CP and WPE management to set the recommendations and discuss option,
• Submit final report and other required documents listed below in the deliverables and provide a concise set of practical and feasible recommendations that can be implemented in future program,
• Incorporate comments received from IRC into final report.

Deliverables

The consultant is expected to lead, accomplish and submit the following deliverables within the agreed timeframe:

• Evaluation design presentation, which will serve as an agreement between parties on how the evaluation will be conducted and reflecting the inception phase.
•  A complete, copy-edited and cleanly formatted English analytical report as a Word document (30-35 pages excluding annexes) including the following sections:

oA title and opening pages,

oExecutive summary,

oIntroduction,

oMethods, context, sampling, bias control and limitations,

oMain section including evaluation criteria, questions, framework, evidences, analysis, findings, highlight variances in the implementation, strengths and challenges, identify sustainability factors, concerns, lessons learned, stories of change and quotes from respondents. It is recommended to illustrate the results by appropriate graphs, visuals, tables and/or a dashboard with an accompanied explanatory text,

oConclusions,

oRecommendations for future projects,

oFull list of references and annexes,

oAnnexes including the evaluation framework, program of work, list of interviewees and participants, and any background information and supporting data including sources, relevant maps and photographs of the evaluation areas where necessary, finalized data collection tools, informed consent

• An executive English summary (3-4 pages) with the key findings and recommendations,
•  Raw data in any of the following statistical packages (STATA, SPSS, cSPro, Excel) and also transcribed qualitative scripts.

IRC roles and responsibilities 

The project is committed to a rigorous monitoring and evaluation framework which will produce a baseline, as well as a number of reports, program description and documentations.

The IRC will provide the following support:

• Clarify consultancy TORs and expectations,
• Make available all appropriate documentation and resources for the evaluation ,
• Be available for meetings with the consultant when needed,
• Facilitate organization of meetings and interviews with targeted stakeholders,
• Provide additional and immediate advise and information when needed,
• Review draft reports (inception and final reports) and provide input,
• Provide work station with access to internet and printing services,
• Provide support in terms of setting up interviews, getting travel permission and informing relevant stakeholders of the evaluation.

Qualification and experience

The time period for the evaluation is limited therefore a consultant is requested to fulfill this task whereby evaluation activities need to be implemented simultaneously and be readily available, fully dedicated to this exercise and equipped to undertake requested multiple tasks. 

The consultant must have relevant experience in evaluations, experience in development and/or humanitarian settings, knowledge of evaluation methodology, and experience and in-depth knowledge of the Lebanese context and Syria crisis.

The consultant must offer the following demonstrated expertize and qualifications: 

• Solid diversity track record and extensive experiences in carrying out evaluations for similar projects,
• At least 5 years of experience working with international organizations/ UN agencies/ donors,
• Previous work in evaluation of interventions in humanitarian contexts including familiarity with humanitarian related resources and material,
• Extensive experience, knowledge, and expertise in the field of emergency response, institutional development, child protection, and gender/GBV
• Knowledge and understanding of the emergency response, culture and working modalities in Lebanon,
• Full working knowledge of English and excellent report writing,
• Knowledge of humanitarian evaluation methods and techniques, including a thorough understanding of data collection, evaluation methodologies and design, and strong qualitative and quantitative research skills, data base management and statistical data analysis,
• Fully conversant with the principles and working methods of project cycle management,

The consultant demonstrate the following skills:

• Technical competence
• Strong project-management skills
• Excellent critical thinking skills
• Excellent ability to communicate with stakeholders
• Flexibility
• An orientation towards collaboration
• Action-oriented and evidence based approach and strong drive for results

Guiding Principles, ethics and Values

• Adherence to IRC Code of conduct, Child Safeguarding practices and confidentiality when interviewing or photographing children.
• The consultant will also take into account principles of impartiality, independence, objectivity, participation, collaboration, transparency, reliability, privacy, and utility throughout the process.
• Strong understanding of humanitarian and evaluation ethics and a commitment to ethical working practices.
• Respect evaluation ethical principles and values such as doing no harm to stakeholders and interviewed persons, avoid distressing people.
• The consultant should adhere to international best practice standards in evaluation and ethics principles for research and evaluation.

Submission of application

Application should include the following:

• CV
• Letter of interest
• A technical proposal explaining, their comprehension of the, ToR, and how they would approach this assignment, summarizing, the methodologies, and approaches they plan to use including a timeline.
• Their availability during the fixed dates.
• Financial offer