1. Background/IRC Summary
Background/IRC Summary the International Rescue Committee responds to the world's worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC offers help to people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their future. At work today in over 40 countries and in 22 U.S. cities, the IRC serves people forced to flee from war, conflict, disaster and the host communities which support them, as well as those who remain within their homes and communities. IRC- Somalia supports health facilities in Benadir, regions. The purpose of this consultancy is to lead the design, implementation, and analysis of a knowledge, attitude and practices (KAP) survey on health including reproductive health (RH) services in Karaan health center, in Benadir region. This assessment will target both providers and communities to inform program implementation for IRC health. This assessment will look at service coverage and capacity as well as KAP of target populations and service providers to better inform programming and content of awareness raising sessions and other information and education materials. The assessment will incorporated client exit interviews at the facility level. Exit interviews will be conducted to identify whether services are meeting the needs of clients who attend the facility and to identify areas to improve clients’ satisfaction. Furthermore, this information is required for monitoring the scale of services, and to assess the client profile by collecting more socio-demographic information about clients such as the level of education, marital and employment status, so as to better understand the type of client seeking different services and who is accessing the services to be able to see if there are client types (e.g. poorer people) that the IRC could try to target as well as assessing the extent health services are reaching underserved populations. The overall assessment will allow IRC to gain a more thorough understanding of specific behavioral factors underpinning health outcomes and understanding the barriers to health including reproductive health services which will in turn enable IRC to better develop targeted messaging and a more appropriate response to improve health outcomes in this region.
Specific objectives:
- To determine the quality of services provided at the health facility level by conducting client exit interviews of patients attending to various health services.
- To identify opportunities for service improvements and what clients want/need.
- To provide feedback to service delivery staff, management and stakeholders about program effectiveness.
- To understand the clients perception of health services.
- To determine the Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices and Behaviors (KAPB) of individuals, households and communities in the areas of health including vaccination, FANC, birth spacing/FP, facility based skilled deliveries and postnatal care.
- Methodology
In consultation with key program and technical staff, the consultant will be responsible for defining the parameters of the assessment, including the finalization of an assessment plan to be shared with the IRC coordination team. The assessment will look at the knowledge, attitude, and practices regarding health services and identify barriers to these services, and include health facility exit Interviews. Focus group discussions will be conducted in a participatory manner that will enable the government counterparts from the Ministry of Health (MoH), other partners, and community members to participate.
Key activities include:
- Desk review: Review existing materials to identify areas in need of further information or clarification.
- Identification of key informants: Other key informants should be identified, including but not limited to MoH personnel, religious leaders, traditional healers, community leaders, influential persons in the community, health INGOs and relevant UN agencies.
- Preparing focus group discussions (FGD) and key informant interviews (KII) guides: Guides and questionnaires should be developed in consultation with IRC program staff. In addition, a clear description of the quality control mechanism that will ensure a quality assessment will also be developed.
- Identification of the respondents/ groups for FGD such as sex, age groups, marital status, etc.
Analysis of findings and presentation of the report
The consultant will be responsible for the analysis of findings and drafting of the final report. The report must provide a clear picture of the current knowledge and practices around health including reproductive health as well as the barriers to optimal health practices and care, and recommendations on the priority behaviors to address and how to address the barriers to those behaviors.
- Expected Deliverables by the end of the consultancy
- Assessment plan: The consultant is expected to submit a detailed plan of how the assessment will be carried out including the assessment protocol. The plan will outline the tools and detailed work plan for the entire exercise.
- KII and FGD guides: Draft tools will be shared with IRC for technical review, inputs, and comments. The consultant will incorporate IRC comments into the final version and field test tools before carrying out the assessment.
- The consultant will facilitate the training of the assessment team on the assessment tools and guides.
- Final Report: In addition to covering attitudes and beliefs surrounding health access, the report should clearly identify the positive attitudes and best practices that need to be enhanced and the negative attitudes and poor practices that need to be addressed to improve behaviors in relation to health and RH services. This report should incorporate specific realistic and achievable recommendations, including the most appropriate behavior change communication strategies and messages that can be undertaken by the communities to address the issues highlighted.
- A draft of the report will be shared with key IRC staff for review and before the end of the consultancy to allow time for review before the release of the final report.
- Handover notes and electronic versions of collected data to be shared with IRC. All data must be provided electronically and all field assessment remains the property of IRC.
- Minimum criteria for submission of the proposal BID
The consultant/firm is expected to demonstrate that it has a track record of not less than four (4) years of experience executing similar surveys in a developing country set-up with diverse geographic and ethnic/clan compositions. The consultant/firm should also list the scale of similar projects worked on in the past.
The consultant/firm is expected to display:
- High sensitivity to conflict-affected settings and diversity issues;
- Good interpersonal, administrative and management skills;
All Bidders are required to meet the following minimum requirements in order to qualify for submission of their proposal:
- Previous experience in similar assessments.
- Capability of the assessment team: Team member(s) shall have public health professionals, along with relevant experience.
- Attachment of all supportive documents with the technical proposal is required.
- Knowledge of the project area and knowledge of the local language (s) will be considered a plus.
Preparation of Technical Proposal
Your proposal should include the following at minimum:
- A brief introduction of bidding consultant/firm or person attaching relevant CVs
- Your understanding of the Terms of Reference
- Proposed methodology and approach
- Proposed work plan and budget (Should express all proposed costs in American Dollar) (USD).
- The financial proposal should list itemized details of costs associated with the assessment and your availability.
While preparing the proposal, applying consultant/firms must give attention to the following:
- The proposed survey team members must, at minimum, have qualifications and experience indicated above (section 4)
- The technical proposal shall provide a description of the consultant/firm including an outline of the consultant/firm’s recent experience on similar undertakings
- Provide the profile of each of the assessment team members including an outline of the members’ recent experience & duration of involvement on assignments of work of similar nature.
Contractual issues
The IRC will provide the following at no cost to the consultant:
- Travel costs (to and from – Nairobi and within Somalia) however no costs associated with preparing the application will be met by IRC
- The consultant / team must comply with The IRC rules and procedures related to security and relations with the media
- The consultant/ team must respect the ethics related to evaluation practice
- Security would be provided and organized by The IRC team
- Documents of reference (To be availed by IRC)
- Relevant project documents as deemed necessary.
HOW TO APPLY:
If you feel you/your organization fit the required profile and are available for the assignment.
Please submit a short technical proposal providing detailed budget breakdown, along with brief technical bio data of the core team members and evidence of similar work undertaken recently. Submit via email toircsomaliajobs@rescue.org. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
