Staff Counsellor

**Job no**: 559144

**Contract type**: Temporary Appointment

**Duty Station**: Panama City

**Level**: NO-3

**Location**: Panama

**Categories**: Health

**This is a National Officer position, only nationals of Panama are eligible to apply.**

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

UNICEF promotes the rights and welfare of all children and adolescents in everything we do. Together with our allies, we work in 190 countries and territories to transform this commitment into practical actions that benefit all children, especially focusing our efforts on reaching the most vulnerable and excluded, worldwide.

**For every child, hope**

The UNICEF Latin America and Caribbean Regional Office is based in in Panama, operating in 36 territories, including 24 country offices.

UNICEF works to put the rights and well-being of the most disadvantaged children at the heart of the social, political, and economic agenda, in line with our equity focus, working across our organization and with our partners in government, civil society and the private sector to support shifts in public policy, fuel social engagement, and increase investment for children.

For information of the work of our organization in the LAC Region, please visit our website: UNICEF LAC Region

**How can you make a difference?**

**Purpose of the Job**

The Staff Counselling is committed to the promotion of mental health and well-being with the goal of building the resilience of staff so that they can continue to function at high levels in order to meet the mandate of the organization. This is accomplished through the provision of counselling services to staff members and their dependents and by identifying and addressing psychological risk factors in the workplace.
Under the supervision of the Regional Director, the Staff Counsellor will develop and implement a wellbeing programme aimed at attending to the psychological needs of UNICEF staff and management in the LAC Region. The work will be done from the preventative perspective at the individual, team and organizational levels.
The Staff Counsellor will work in close coordination to provide support to staff and collaborate with Country Management Teams, HR, Staff Association, Peer Support Volunteers (PSVs), the UN Medical Clinic and other UN Staff and Stress Counsellors. This post is based in the Regional Office but with the regional remit and thus frequent field missions to the designated countries of coverage will be required.
Provide services to Regional Office, support ROMT, HR and Staff Association.

**Key Functions, accountabilities and related duties/ tasks**:
**1. Psychosocial support**:

- Facilitate the provision of effective psychosocial support to managers and individual staff prioritizing emergency locations with the aim of mitigating stress and increasing resilience in staff and their dependents.
- Provide a safe and confidential environment where staff members are able to address professional and personal problems related to mental health either individually or in groups (modality: assessment, short-term intervention, referral).
- Provide online and in-person support and advice to the leadership and managers in offices on healthy work practices and approaches on how to effectively support staff and encourage resilience. Recommend suitable staff support strategies to managers during and following emergencies and other crises.
- Deliver preventative psychoeducational programmes/training to address systemic issues and recurrent problems within teams and offices; develop and deliver tailored online and in-person workshops and webinars for staff in different Country Offices, raise awareness on common mental health themes and act as an advocate for anti-stigma programming.
- Provide pre/post-deployment briefings to new staff in high risk or emergency locations.
- Develop a creative system to build a network of external mental health providers available to provide services to staff.
- Coordinate the Peer Support Volunteer (PSV) Programme for the country offices and help organize the PSV retreat.

**2. Provide Critical Incident Stress Management to groups and/or individual staff following critical incidents.**

A holistic approach to critical incident management is used and may include services such as practical support, psychoeducation, psychological first aid, strategic advice to leadership, family support and individual or group interventions. The Staff Counsellor will be responsible for:

- Contacting the affected staff member(s) and offering information about typical stress reactions, support and referral information.
- Facilitating appropriate traumatic stress interventions, following a critical