Technical Advisor II - Family Strengthening

Catholic Relief Services | CRS•Baltimore, MD

About The Position

CRS is seeking Technical Advisor candidates for an anticipated multi-country child development, care, and protection project. The overall objective of the project is to strengthen national systems that protect vulnerable children, support families, and improve early childhood development through locally led and sustainable approaches. The project will improve outcomes for vulnerable children by strengthening child protection systems, supporting families and caregivers, advancing integrated early childhood health and development, and reducing reliance on residential care. As Technical Advisor II – Family Strengthening, you will provide technical leadership, advice, guidance, and support to a wide range of program design and implementation issues with a focus on family strengthening, safe family-based alternative care, safeguarding, gatekeeping, case management, reintegration, kinship care, foster care, and family support services in line with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) program quality principles and standards, donor guidelines, and global best practices. You will support regional and Country Program (CP) teams to advance the delivery of high-quality programming for vulnerable children and families. Your technical expertise will contribute to determining how effective, adaptive, evidence-based, and innovative CRS' family strengthening and safe family-based alternative care programming is across participating countries. The Technical Advisor will serve as the project's lead technical resource for strengthening child protection systems, promoting family-based care, supporting government-led reform efforts, and ensuring technical excellence across all project interventions.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Social Work, Child Protection, Psychology, Sociology, Public Health, Human Services, International Development, Social Policy, Public Policy, Education, or a related field.
Minimum of eight years relevant international working experience in an advisory or management role with progressive responsibilities, ideally with an international NGO, with minimum of three years supporting family strengthening, alternative care, early childhood development, household economic strengthening, safeguarding, or related programming.
Previous experience providing technical assistance and developing successful proposals for external donor funding is required.
Fluency in English required.

Nice To Haves

Master's degree in Social Work, Child Protection, Psychology, Sociology, Public Health, Human Services, Social Policy, Public Administration, International Development, Education, or a related field.
Fluency in Spanish or French a plus.

Responsibilities

Contribute to the development and implementation of agency-wide strategies, standards, tools, and best practices in family strengthening and safe family-based alternative care that effectively engage program participants, partners, donors, faith-based organizations, and governments. Help ensure a cross-sectoral approach integrating safeguarding, gender, disability inclusion, social protection, and child protection.
Provide technical solutions to regional and CP teams, remotely and on-site, for strategic planning and how to best apply program design and implementation standards, best practices, partnership principles, tools, and M&E, ensuring high-quality implementation of integrated early childhood development interventions including nurturing care.
Lead the development and refinement of technical approaches, guidance, tools, and implementation frameworks related to family strengthening, gatekeeping, family reintegration, kinship care, foster care, family support services, and case management.
Support participating countries and partners to strengthen the capacity of government institutions, faith actors, civil society organizations, and social service workforces to provide quality child protection and family care services, including a range of interventions such as parenting support, household economic strengthening and psychosocial support.
Contribute to regional and CP efforts to pre-position CRS for growth opportunities in family strengthening and family-based alternative care. Lead or contribute to the development of the technical design for large and/or complex proposals, including defining appropriate monitoring systems and indicators. Advise project teams on integrating donor strategies, priorities and technical requirements into CRS’ approach.
Contribute to capacity-strengthening initiatives for CRS and partner staff through development of learning strategies, training curricula, technical guidance, workshops, mentoring, and coaching. Promote cross-country learning, knowledge management, and the exchange of best practices, lessons learned, and innovations across participating countries and partners.
Contribute to knowledge management and learning through collecting and analyzing program data, evaluating strategic projects, assisting with measuring program impact, documenting promising and best practices, and producing technical reports and learning products. Support achievement and technical verification of milestone-based deliverables and assist project teams in applying adaptive management approaches to strengthen performance and results.
Establish and maintain relationships with donors, peer organizations, research and other institutions family strengthening, alternative care. Participate in forums related to integrated early childhood development, nurturing care, positive parenting, child health, nutrition, and early learning, and household economic strengthening to share best practices and promote CRS’ work.
Liaise with the Child Protection and Care System Strengthening Technical Advisor II to coordinate technical support to regions, country programs and the broader initiative