Long Term Agreement

**Job no**: 570091

**Contract type**: Consultant

**Duty Station**: Panama City

**Level**: Consultancy

**Location**: Panama

**Categories**: Social Policy

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.

**For every child, **_protection_**

**How can you make a difference?**

1. BACKGROUND / RATIONALE

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.

In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), UNICEF is present in 36 countries and territories through 24 national offices spread throughout the region and a regional office based in Panama City. Efforts are aimed at UNICEF putting 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.

Social Protection is a key area for the promotion of children's rights and for the overcome of children poverty in the region. Through our social policy network, composed by Social Policy Specialists and focal points based in the country offices, UNICEF works in the provision of technical assistance, quality assurance, evidence generation and policy advocacy to eradicate child poverty, expand social protection for families with children - including through the improvement of care and support policies and systems - and increase the quantity and quality of public investments aimed at children.

In order to support the work of UNICEF in LAC at both Regional and Country Offices, UNICEF LACRO seeks to engage the services of regional experts in Social Protection, in five different areas: (1) System Strengthening: Legislation, Policies and Programmes; Management Information Systems for programme delivery; Cash transfer programmes; Integrated social services; (2) Financing of Social Protection Systems; (3) Care and Family-Friendly Policies; (4) Disability-inclusive Social Protection and (5) Shock Responsive Social Protection.

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

2. PURPOSE OF ASSIGNMENT

3. PROGRAMME CATEGORIES

The focus is on Social Protection key service areas:
**Service Area
**Activities**

1. Social Protection - System Strengthening

1. Social Protection Systems: (a) supporting drafting, review and mapping of social protection strategies, roadmaps, policy frameworks and promoting policy dialogue; (b) supporting drafting, assessing and implementation of social protection policy legislation; (c) coordination, assessing and developing national capacities, supporting national multisector dialogue facilitation; (d) design, assess and support the implementation of integrated social policies, services and programs.

2. Cash-transfers: (a) support the design of cash and integrated social programmes: inclusion/targeting, transfer size, frequency and links to other programmes; (b) implementation of cash and integrated social programmes: identification, digital and innovative payment systems, monitoring and evaluation, grievance and redress mechanisms, communications, integration with broader social services offer, institutional coordination.

3. Management Information Systems (MIS): (a) operational support for implementing integrated administrative systems, improved coordination and service delivery; (b) integrated data administration systems: programme beneficiary MIS, integrated MIS, national single registries, national social registries, system interoperability, data protection and management

2. Financing Social Protection Systems

1. Data and evidence generation: Fiscal space analysis for social protection programmes and strategies, including identification of possible funding sources for social protection interventions; Fiscal space analysis of the scaling-up of social protection programs in response to the various recurring shocks; Costing of social protection programmes and strategies using existing survey data and/or estimates; Costing of (new/adjusted) social protection programmes and strategies and investment plans; Microsimulation of costs linked to alternative scenarios introducing one or more new social protection interventions and/or scaling up existing benefits, so as to assess targeting accuracy, benefit adequacy and impacts;
2. Budget process en