Panama: Psychosocial Support Counsellor for the Federation, Americas Region

Background and Purpose

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (“the Federation”) is the world’s largest volunteer-based humanitarian network with 190 member National Societies. The Federation’s work is guided by seven fundamental principles: humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity and universality.

The Secretariat of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies works to a Business Model and has a Business Delivery Plan with key commitments that sharpen its focus, clarity, and efficiency and accountability results. The Secretariat, headquartered in Geneva, has five decentralized regional offices: one of which is the Americas, guided by the Secretariat strategies for implementation and areas of focus that builds on the vision of strategy 2020. The Americas’ region is organized in two main hemispheres: a group of support services departments – one of which is the Regional Human Resources Department – and a set of geographical configurations of (i) Country Cluster Support Teams and (ii) Country Office(s), as well as the Deputy Regional Director, each of them led by the Regional Director; and another hemisphere: six building blocks composed by technical departments (i) Partnerships and Resource Development, (ii) Policy, Strategy and Knowledge; (iii) Communication, (iv) Disaster and Crisis: Preparedness, Response, and Recovery, (v) Health and Care, (vi) Logistics, each of them led by the Deputy Regional Director.

Purpose

Following the decentralization of human resources functions to the Federation’s five regions, development of a regional based support network to ensure the continued effectiveness of (PSP) Psychological Support Program, needs to be rolled out. Existing support from the Geneva-based psychotherapists counselors will continue, but it is expected that the primary support functions be provided at the regional level.

The Federation is committed to the protection and wellbeing of its staff by providing stress counselling services. The Federation has undertaken a Human Resources Strategic Framework that focuses on the importance of its paid and volunteer staff. A key aspect of that strategy reinforces the creation of an enabling environment conducive to growth. For this, a stress counselor will be recruited as a consultant for the provision of stress counselling services by the Americas regional office, based in Panama.

Scope and Audience of Stress Counselling Services

The psychosocial program provides support to Federation staff contributing to its programs and operations in the Americas region, irrespective of their duty station or location.

Instructions and Information to Service Providers

The Federation invites you to submit a technical proposal for provision of stress counseling services for its staff as per sections herein described as:

• Service Specifics
• Method of Delivery of Services
• Management of the Psychological Support Program

Service Specifics Key Points:

Psychosocial Support Counselor will be expected to provide services with specific charges per session being billed to IFRC and charged to the relevant project code.

The Psychosocial Support Counselor will be expected to abide by the IFRC Code of Conduct in their dealings with all staff and volunteers.

Deliverables/Outputs:

• Provide stress management briefings to new or recently-contracted staff, either individually (preferred) or as a group.
• Reinforce self-assessment and knowledge of types of stress.
• Develop site-specific guidance as relates to support to nationally-recruited staff. (note that in each location the Federation employs staff nationally and internationally.
• Design and organize sharing sessions with all staff to have an understanding of the services and encourage them to access them. The content of the training should include types of services, accessibility, eligibility, confidentiality, contact address and telephone numbers, contact person, feedback, complaints and procedures.
• Provide critical incident debriefings to staff as needed.
• Provide debriefing at end-of-contract on an individual basis, as means to monitor individual issues as well as identify issues – in confidence – for management consideration, e.g. insufficient administrative support, security support, etc.
• Develop and maintain a support network, to include emergency availability and as needed, short-term deployment to emergency operational sites. For example, large-scale operations such as the Haiti earthquake in 2010, Zika Outbreak and Ecuador earthquake in 2016.
• Develop and keep a file management system that ensures absolute confidentiality and continued support during the staff member’s contract term.
• As indicated, develop with the Geneva-based stress counselors a mechanism for follow-up support, either during the contract term or after termination.
• Plan, develop, and implement stress management training programs for staff: He/she will develop the specific training program to include the curriculum, modules and support materials.
• Coordinate with the other Psychosocial Support Counselors, that they are not on vacation at the same time.
• Attending the skype sessions arranged by the PSP Coordinator and frequently meet up with HR Senior Officer and Regional Manager to discuss any challenges and brainstorm on best fit solutions in implementation of the PSS project
• Support delegates in hardship missions or staff members who have gone through a security incident etc by face-to-face, telephone or Skype.
• Provide quarterly reports which will be shared with the HR Manager on a quarterly basis highlighting the major general issues while maintaining confidentiality of the clients.
• Write an Annual report which will be submitted to the PSP coordinator to be consolidated in the IFRC Annual PSP report.

Method of Delivery of the Services

The provision of stress counselling services will be agreed based on a monthly retainership at a rate specified hereafter and payable upon submission of an invoice by the service provider within the first five days of the subsequent month. Service Provider may provide stress counseling services in the following manner, or as suitable for the Federation staff: in the premises of the Federation, in the stress counselor’s office, or by other reliable means of remote communication.

Counselor’sfee

Each Psychosocial Support Counselors receive a monthly retainer fee USD300.00 to cover for accepting working with short notice and odd hours. This is also paid for the vacation month.

The Psychosocial Support Counselors will charge a fee of USD60.00 per session for the services that they will provide to staff.

Invoices will be presented to IFRC at the end of each month cumulatively in respect to sessions conducted for each month. HR will certify the accuracy of the invoice internally before payment is processed and made. Cancellation done less than 24 hours before session will be charged.

Any training, field visits and other additional work is charged separately.

Management of the Selection Process of Service Provider for Stress Counselling Services

The Regional Human Resources Department will be responsible to manage the selection process of the service provider for stress counseling services. The selected service provider should meet the eligibility qualifications and requirements such as, but not limited to the following in observance of the Federation internal policies and procedures:

Eligibility, Qualifications and Requirements:

• Language of proposal

The proposal, documents (letter of interest and CV or resume) and all correspondence related to the proposal should be written in plain English.

• Contact point

The proposal must provide a single focal point of contact for all correspondence relating to this terms of references. The Federation will not be responsible for contacting other than the nominated contact.

Requirements

Education

• Psychologist, psychiatrist, psychotherapist or counselor (university degree and professional qualifications required, licensed)
• Trained in psycho-traumatology or critical incident debriefing (preferred)

Experience

• 5+ years of relevant technical experience in mental health fields or alike (psychological, psychiatry, psychotherapy, etc.)
• Experience with international humanitarian organizations or multinational corporations (preferred).

Skills

• Ability to support individuals through effective coaching and stress management techniques
• Ability to work with multi-discipline and multi-cultural teams in a cross functional environment, excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• Skills in training and developing people
• Proficient user of MS Office package (Word, Excel, PPT, etc.), including regular user of web sites and social media

Other requirements

• Availability for short visits to surrounding countries at short notice
• Availability to provide services under extraordinary work time and emergency phase as the situation requires, and under stressful working conditions
• Completed Basic First Aid course (preferred)

Languages:

• Fluent spoken and written English
• Fluent spoken and written Spanish
• Good command of another IFRC official language (i.e., French), or a language relevant in the region or country of assignment (i.e., Portuguese)

Part I. Technical executive summary (max. 1 page)

This should provide a brief overview of the services, with key areas of the technical proposal, including how it is intended to achieve the specific services.

Part II. Technical Proposal (max. 2 pages)

The technical part of the proposal should set out:

• Introduction to your services (name, location, size, years of experience in the field of expertise)
  o clearly indicate previous experience with psychological or similar field, country/ies of operation
  o clearly detail what your services have consisted on – including countries and regions that you cover, relevant information that will allow the Federation to understand your organization and business, etc.
• Details of the services proposed (please be sure to address in detail the requirements specified in this proposal, how are requirements met, how services offered will add value to the Federation’s Psychological Support Program, any additional details that will allow the Federation understand offered services.
• Applications should clearly specify how the service provider comply with requisite professional certification as per law, national competent authorities and the constituted associations regulating their operations in the Panamanian territory.
• Applications should specify whether it can comply with service provider requirements specified in this section of Eligibility, Qualifications and Requirements.
• Applications should provide any additional relevant details (e.g. Do you provide services to other organizations in the humanitarian field?)

HOW TO APPLY

A letter of motivation must be submitted along with the application no later than June 30, 2019. In order to ensure a proper comparative evaluation of your application for this vacancy and to enable us to consider your profile against other similar current and future vacancies, we ask that you submit your application thru the following link https://www.ifrc.org/en/who-we-are/working-with-us/current-vacancies/job-description/?id=29075