Child Protection and Care System Strengthening Advisor

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is an international non-governmental organization supporting relief and development work in over 99 countries around the world. CRS programs assist persons on the basis of need, regardless of creed, ethnicity or nationality and works through local church and non-church partners to implement its programs. CRS has been helping po… Child Protection and Care System Strengthening Advisor Job Summary: The Advisor acts as the subject matter expert, providing technical advice, guidance, and support to strengthen child protection, care, and development systems in Kenya.

Through application of specialized technical expertise, the staff will support project implementation, systems strengthening, capacity development, and learning efforts to improve outcomes for vulnerable children and families. The staff contributes to improving policies, practices, service quality, and sustainable system change through collaboration with government, civil society, faith-based, and community stakeholders.

Roles and Key Responsibilities: Serve as the project’s subject matter expert for child protection and care system strengthening within Kenya. Provide technical guidance on child protection systems, care reform, case management, alternative care, social service workforce strengthening, and related reforms, in coordination with the global technical counterpart and drawing on senior consultants and resource partners with specialised expertise as needed.

Ensure child protection and care system strengthening approaches reflect current evidence, national standards, safeguarding principles, and country context. Analyze the government child protection information management system (CPIMS), with relevant resource partners, from the perspective of high-quality care and support operationalization uptake of recommended improvements. Develop child protection competencies and training materials; facilitate training of trainers in coordination and collaboration with partner government and support the rollout and quality of training for health, social service, and community actors.

Informed by action plans developed with national and targeted subnational public authorities, provide technical support to child protection authorities and other relevant actors to meet national standards, promote supportive supervision, and strengthen implementation quality. Work with the Project Director, global technical counterpart, resource partners, other project, MEAL, and implementation teams to align child protection and care system strengthening approaches with Early Childhood Development, family strengthening, alternative family care, parenting, Household Economic Strengthening, and violence prevention.

Maintain relationships with key project, technical, and partner stakeholders to support coordination, exchange, and shared problem-solving. Advise on integration and alignment of government-led data collection systems and relevant CPIMS data into the project’s MEAL system, in collaboration with resource partners where relevant. Facilitate safe and inclusive reflection processes with government, civil society, faith-based, community, and implementation stakeholders to interpret results, share practice-based learning, and identify adaptations.

Review child protection and care system strengthening data, propose program adaptations, and share relevant findings and learning with country, global, and technical stakeholders as appropriate. Monitor national and subnational issues that may affect child protection and care system strengthening results and recommend mitigation measures as needed. Incorporate and monitor the use of safeguarding and protection best practice in child protection and care system strengthening interventions, in coordination with the Safeguarding Advisor where applicable, and support safeguarding action planning with subawardees as relevant.

Contribute to reporting, documentation, technical knowledge sharing, and relevant networks. Wr