Background:
CRS is seeking a Family Strengthening and Early Childhood Development Advisor for an anticipated multi-county 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.
Job Summary:
The staff acts as the subject matter expert, providing technical advice, guidance, and support to provide family strengthening through a protective factors framework, while supporting alternative family-based care and the transition of residential care. The staff will also use the Nurturing Care Framework to design, layer, and sequence activities that support young children’s health, nutrition, responsive caregiving, early learning, safety and security, and caregiver well-being, while strengthening practical linkages to services that help families provide nurturing care. The staff will also contribute to improving policies, practices, service quality, and sustainable system change through collaboration with government, civil society, faith-based, and community stakeholders.
Roles and Key Responsibilities
- Provide technical guidance on family-based case management, family strengthening, prevention of child-family separation, reintegration, alternative care, and family-based care pathways.
- Apply a protective factors model that strengthens parental resilience, social connections, concrete supports in times of need, caregiver knowledge of parenting and child development, children’s social and emotional competence, and nurturing caregiver-child relationships.
- Ensure approaches reflect safeguarding principles, disability inclusion, trauma-informed practice, country context, and relevant transitioning residential care guidance.
- Support strong assessment, case planning, referral, follow-up, documentation, and case closure practices for families at risk of separation, reintegrating families, kinship care families, foster care families, and other alternative care arrangements. Help teams understand the minimum family strengthening packages and specialized pathways that connect households to practical supports before risks escalate as per SDCS FS SOP.
- Provide technical guidance on iECD approaches grounded in the Nurturing Care Framework, including health, nutrition, responsive caregiving, early learning, safety and security, and caregiver well-being.
- Provide expertise on iECD systems, policies, standards, service packages, curricula, implementation guidance, and quality assurance mechanisms, as relevant to the country’s proposed work plan.
- Provide expertise on childcare facilities and ECDE centers quality improvement, including safe and stimulating environments, child-centered learning, caregiver capacity, safeguarding, supervision, and continuous quality improvement. And on community-based ECD and caregiver support approaches that strengthen responsive caregiving, early learning, child protection, violence prevention, and family capacity to provide nurturing care.
- Provide expertise on early identification and referral for children with developmental delays, disabilities, nutrition concerns, protection risks, caregiver stress, or other vulnerabilities, based on relevant country platforms and referral networks.
- Coordinate with the global technical counterpart and relevant technical advisors, and liaise with resource partners and consultants as appropriate, to ensure ECD activities draw on specialized expertise in areas such as positive parenting, nutrition, policy development, daycare/childcare quality, MHPSS-informed ECD, or disability inclusion.
- Build capacity to apply residential care transition guidance, alternative care standards, reintegration practice, and family-based care pathways in day-to-day implementation.
- Align family strengthening with child protection, alternative care, ECD, health, nutrition, social protection, disability inclusion, violence prevention, parenting, and referrals to HES/SILC where appropriate.
- Work closely with the parenting resource partner to ensure parenting content and delivery approaches are context appropriate and responsive to the needs of specific household types.
- Tailor parenting and caregiver support for caregivers of children with disabilities, families at risk of separation, reintegrating families, kinship care families, foster care families, and other alternative care families.
- Develop, adapt, or update ECD competencies, training curricula, job aids, coaching tools, supervision tools, and practical guidance for health, social service, education, community, daycare/ECDE, faith-based, and project actors.
- Document lessons from relevant ECD workstreams, such as IECD policy operationalization, childcare facilities/ECDE quality improvement, care group delivery, family strengthening models, workforce strengthening, specialized reintegration pathways, parenting adaptations, referral linkages, and approaches that help children remain safely in family care.
- Provide inputs to milestone reports, donor updates, briefs, learning products, and project communications on family strengthening, protective factors, parenting adaptations, case management, reintegration, and family-based care.
- Participate in relevant working groups, networks, and fora related to family strengthening, case management, parenting, alternative care, reintegration, and residential care transition.
- Support partner staff, government counterparts, caregivers, and community stakeholders to share learning and practical implementation experience in relevant fora.
Required/Desired Foreign Language: Ability to clearly communicate in written and spoken English and Kiswahili. Knowledge of the local language of the county is an added advantage.
Travel Required: The Staff will be expected to travel 70% of the time within the project areas of operation as needed.
Supervisory Responsibilities: None
Key Working Relationships:
- Internal: Anticipated project staff, Health, Education and Social Services Unit, and CRS Kenya MEAL Unit
- External: Local Implementing Partners, GOK, interfaith networks, faith-based organizations, Careleavers, relevant private sector entities, local communities, beneficiaries, donors and other stakeholders.
