Individual Contractor

**Job no**: 555363

**Contract type**: Consultant

**Duty Station**: Panama City

**Level**: Consultancy

**Location**: Panama

**Categories**: Social Policy

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

**For every child, hope**

**Purpose of the Job**

Under the general guidance of the Regional Social Policy Adviser, the Regional Social Policy Individual Contractor is accountable for providing technical support and assistance in all stages of social policy programming, from strategic planning and formulation to delivery of concrete and sustainable results and support to policy dialogue processes. This includes programmes aimed at improving (a) public policies to reduce child poverty; (b) social protection coverage and impact on children; (c) the transparency, adequacy, equity and efficiency of child-focused public investments and financial management; and (d) governance, decentralization and accountability measures to increase public participation and the quality, equity and coverage of social services. This encompasses both direct programme work with government and civil society partners as well as linkages and support to teams working on education, emergencies health, child protection, water and sanitation, and HIV. It also entails supporting the Social Policy Unit with LACRO’s internal processes.

**How can you make a difference?**

**Specific Tasks**

**1. Improving data on child poverty & vulnerability for increased use for policy and programme action**
- Supports the collection, analysis and user-friendly presentation of data on multidimensional and monetary child poverty, including strengthening national capacity to collect routinely, report and use data for policy decision-making.
- Provides timely, regular data-driven analysis for effective prioritization, planning, and development; facilitates results-based management for planning, adjusting, and scaling-up specific social policy initiatives to reduce child poverty.
- Analyzes the macroeconomic context and its impact on social development, emerging issues and social policy concerns, as well as implications for children, and proposes and promotes appropriate responses in respect of such issues and concerns, including government resource allocation policies and the effect of social welfare policies on the rights of children

**2. Strengthening social protection coverage and impact for children**
- Supports the development of social protection policies, legislation and programmes with attention to increasing coverage of and impact on children, with special attention the most marginalized. Identifies, generates and presents evidence to support this goal in collaboration with partners.
- Supports strengthening of integrated social protection systems, providing technical support to partners to improve the design of cash transfers and child grants and improve linkages with other social protection interventions such as health insurance, public works and social care services as well as complementary services and intervention related to nutrition, health, education, water and sanitation, child protection and HIV.
- Supports improved monitoring and research around social protection impact on child outcomes, and use of data and research findings for strengthening programme results.

**3. Improving use of public financial resources for children**
- Undertakes budget analysis to inform UNICEF’s advocacy and technical assistance to Ministries of Finance, planning commissions and social sector ministries to improve equitable allocations for essential services for children. Works with sector colleagues to build capacity to undertake costing and cost effectiveness analysis on priority interventions to help inform policy decisions on child-focused investments.
- Supports the identification of policy options for improved domestic financing of child-sensitive social protection interventions.
- Undertakes and builds capacity of partners for improved monitoring and tracking of public expenditure to support transparency, accountability and effective financial flows for essential service delivery, including through support to district level planning, budgeting and public financial management as well as facilitating community participation

**4. Strengthening capacity of local governments to plan, budget, consult on and monitor child-focused social services.**
- Where national decentralization pr