MHPSS in CPHA Consultant UNICEF

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Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) is an institutional priority for the UN, and for UNICEF. The UNICEF Strategic Plan 2PHONE_NUMBER identifies MHPSS as a priority area, building upon existing programming through child protection, education, and health. Global priorities show increased need for attention to MHPSS, particularly for girls, boys, women and men in communities affected by emergencies and other adversities (e.g., torture, war, intimate partner violence, poverty, malnutrition, amongst others). While most people are resilient to adversity, global estimates suggest that on, average, 22% of adults report symptoms consistent with mental health conditions if they have experienced conflict in previous 10 years. Observed rates of mental health problems after extremely adverse events (e.g. torture, rape) tend be over 40%. Some individuals will develop mental health conditions in the long term (e.g., depression) and others will be impacted in less visible ways. Estimates are unclear for children and adolescents, but likely to be similar. Poor mental health can impair individuals functioning, influence children s behavior, and create barriers to accessing education, interfere with engagement in work or work productivity, and hinder one s ability to engage in social or community functions. Nonetheless, most people with mental health conditions around the world do not receive effective care. Among people living with depression, only 1 in 5 persons in high-income countries and 1 in 27 in lower-middle income countries receive minimally adequate treatment, in part due to an insufficient number of workers trained in mental health care. Integrating MHPSS services across sectors is essential, but a question remains regarding the quality of the training and the competency of the workforce. Making certain that the MHPSS workforce across sectors such as education, protection and health are able to attend to these challenges can ensure that individuals with mental health problems will have access to effective evidence based MHPSS interventions. Access to a competent and skillful workforce will aid the community as well. One way to address access to care is to expand MHPSS services delivered by diverse cadres in different settings. With appropriate training and supervision, professionals and non-professionals can provide support and effective help.

The IASC Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) Minimum Service Package (MSP) is an inter sectoral package of high priority MHPSS activities needed during humanitarian crises to address the mental health and psychosocial support needs of affected populations. Use of the MSP is expected to lead to better-coordinated, more predictable and more equitable responses that make effective use of limited resources and thus improve the scale and quality of programming. This will ultimately result in substantially better mental health and psychosocial well-being for larger numbers of people. The MSP was released as an IASC product in December 2022. It has been increasingly incorporated into key humanitarian response planning documents, both at country-specific and global levels. It has been centrally featured in core MHPSS training packages and served as a basis for key advocacy initiatives. Technical support to use the MSP and strengthen the MHPSS response across different sectors and areas of work has been provided to various interagency groups and to MHPSS surge roster members. Since 2022 there have been over 3400 participant engagements in online orientations and over 1300 unique participants in intensive workshops. To support the implementation of the MSP, a range of operational tools were developed, including: a Multi-sectoral MHPSS needs and resources Assessment Toolkit, additional MSP workshop modules (e.g. on Monitoring and Evaluation) to build capacity on the MSP across sectors. UNICEF's Centres of Excellence (CoEs) represent a strategic evolution in Programme Technical Assistance, with a dual mandate of delivering high-quality support to Country Offices, Regional Offices, and government partners while exercising global normative leadership and partnership stewardship. They complement Country Office capacity by stewarding adaptive standards, methodologies, evidence, and guidance refined through country feedback and implementation learning while exercising authority via quality assurance and evidence brokering, without providing programme oversight. The purpose of the consultancy is to support UNICEF s MHPSS team in the Child Protection Centre of Excellence to provide technical assistance on measurement and evaluation and MHPSS in emergencies; support the development of the new Mental Health strategy and ensuring integration into UNICEF s new Strategic Plan; and to enhance the response capacity with the MHPSS MSP through supported implementation, development of operational tools and field test.

The consultant will support the provision of technical assistance through the Child Protection COE by:

• supporting the management of the IASC MHPSS MSP helpdesk and the development of MSP operational tools, respective field testing and revision processes, as well as provide training and support to build the capacity of humanitarian actors in using the MSP across different sectors and areas of work to strengthen the MHPSS response;
• supporting the development of the new Mental Health strategy and ensuring integration into UNICEF s new Strategic Plan, including participating in a 3-day strategic meeting in the Hague, Netherlands;
• providing technical assistance at global and country level on measurement and evaluation of MHPSS programs and on MHPSS in emergencies.
• As part of technical assistance (TA) to country offices, travel for in-person TA will be required. The details will depend on humanitarian TA requests coming and will be decided in agreement with the consultant. Costs will be covered by UNICEF and do not need to be included in the financial proposal.