Regional Safeguarding & Child Protection Advisor At READ Foundation

Job Description & Person Specification

Regional Safeguarding & Child Protection Advisor

Contract: TBC

Location: Pakistan

Reports to: Programmes Manager/Deputy CEO

Salary: Monthly, PKR 330,000 – 400,000

Closing Date: 9th March 2023

About READ Foundation

READ Foundation is a UK based registered charity working to create school places for children living in poverty in the developing world.

We create opportunities for orphan and needy children to go to school to gain an education and build a better life for themselves. We currently focus on constructing new schools, providing quality sponsorship for orphans and are now expanding our educational portfolio to reflect the large humanitarian and development needs ongoing throughout the world.

We created our first school in 1994 with a single classroom of 25 children, while as of this academic year we are now running almost 400 schools, in which over 100,000 children study, almost 10% of whom are orphaned by father or both parents. However, with a global shortage of classrooms in the millions, there is still much to do to achieve universal education.

Safeguarding and child protection is at the core of READ Foundation’s mission. As an education charity we work with vulnerable children and adults across a wide range of contexts. READ Foundation is committed to ensuring an enhanced and holistic strategy that will specifically focus on ensuring our safeguarding and child protection measures keep not only children, but also young adults and all those we serve safe within our work. We are also committed to supporting our wide range of stakeholders to continue to uphold with highest standards of our safeguarding duty and duty of care. This means nothing must contribute in any way to harming or placing children and persons we serve at risk of harm. Designing and delivering safe programmes is a major aspect of our commitment to ‘do no harm’.

READ Foundation will hereby be referred to as RF.

Purpose of Job

The post holder will work across the South Asia and MENA regions ensuring that our country offices and implementing partners are working to the highest standard of protection, wellbeing and care. The Safeguarding Advisor will be responsible for ensuring that RF’s Safeguarding and Child Protection policy and reporting and response mechanisms are integrated into all aspects of RF’s work and practice. Reporting to RF HQ in the UK, the Advisor will be based in Pakistan but will work in close collaboration with RF staff members in our country offices and implementing partners in the MENA and South Asia regions.

Main Responsibilities

Capacity building and support

• Provide technical advice, and support to RF offices globally in coordination with relevant colleagues.
• Ensure that advice and guidance is in line with RF Safeguarding & Child Protection policies and protocols.
• Lead country level action planning to ensure progress on RF’s safeguarding & child protection strategy in the region.
• In close partnership with Leadership, ensure that basic staff trainings about safeguarding & child protection are developed, rolled out, and tracked within all RF’s offices.
• Ensure coordination and close working with Safeguarding networks in country.
• In coordination with the Deputy CEO and Programmes Manager, act as a strategic adviser to the region on safeguarding & child protection issues aligning with the regional strategy.
• Work with Human Resources (HR) to deliver a coordinated service to the country office
• Lead and work alongside safeguarding & child protection country office focal points in safeguarding & child protection related data collection and auditing.
• Ensure that action plans are in place at the country office to facilitate continuous improvement in the prevention of and response to safeguarding & child protection reports.
• Develop and further improve the policies and processes in line with international standards and local laws.

Regional vetting and referencing

• Work with the HQ Safeguarding & child protection team to ensure that there is a clear process in place for appropriate levels of vetting and checking for different levels of staff, this includes global criminal checks and the INGO misconduct disclosure scheme, taking a lead on this in the region.
• Work with relevant teams to ensure that these checks are rolled out, ensuring that all staff are checked in line with agreed protocols.
• Ensure that clear vetting information is retained to protect the organisation from those people that may wish to access vulnerable people, so that we can ensure that they are not recruited into the organisation.
• Work with Country office safeguarding & child protection focal points and HR staff to ensure that these practices are implemented at a local level.

Investigation- Sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse

• As directed by the Deputy CEO, conduct investigations and guide management on subsequent actions in line with the organizations policies and procedures.
• Conduct investigations by adhering to the principles of confidentiality, impartiality, fairness and sensitivity of investigation.
• Coordinate and where appropriate act as the Lead investigator and advisor on Sexual Harassment, Exploitation & Abuse (SEA) investigations.
• In consultation with the Deputy CEO, ensure organisational clarity of approach for investigations into allegations of SEA.
• Ensure rigorous reporting and close out of cases in line with RF’s investigation protocols.
• Establish networks and then reporting and coordination and develop processes as to how to get information from the field, and ensure triangulation of data and share learnings with relative staff at HQ.

Emergency response and deployment

• Provide on the ground safeguarding & child protection support and expertise during humanitarian emergencies in the region if required.
• Ensure that RF staff and related personnel that are deployed have received on-boarding in safeguarding & child protection, and have signed the code of conduct
• Carry out safeguarding & child protection assessments and setting up processes for community complaints.
• Work in coordination RF staff and other actors/ INGO’s to provide a coordinated response.

Other Responsibilities

• Development of resources and materials.
• As dictated by the Deputy CEO and Senior Management.

Work arrangement

• The Advisor will report to the Head of Programmes and the Deputy CEO in the first instance who will be responsible for coordination and oversight of the advisor’s activities. The position is based in Pakistan but as the role is responsible for all countries under the RF banner, travel will be expected. Freedom of flexibility of travel is therefore required.
• Fluency in English is required, fluency in Urdu and Arabic is preferred.

Experience & Qualifications

• The person engaged will be expected to have worked with protection, child protection and gender in both development and emergency settings.
• The person should also have worked in programme management capacity in development and emergency settings and have some field experience.
• Experience in facilitating training of personnel/staff.
• Degree in social sciences, social work, human rights and preferably with a focus on protection/child protection/child rights.
• Experience of policy review and process development for organisational safeguarding in Pakistan is highly desirable.