UNITED NATIONS CHILDREN'S FUND has floated a tender for Consultant - Impact Evaluation of Teen Clubs Program for Adolescents Living with HIV (ALHIV). The project location is Swaziland and the tender is closing on 22 Jul 2018. The tender notice number is , while the TOT Ref Number is 25088440. Bidders can have further information about the Tender and can request the complete Tender document by Registering on the site.

Expired Tender

Procurement Summary

Country : Swaziland

Summary : Consultant - Impact Evaluation of Teen Clubs Program for Adolescents Living with HIV (ALHIV)

Deadline : 22 Jul 2018

Other Information

Notice Type : Tender

TOT Ref.No.: 25088440

Document Ref. No. :

Competition : ICB

Financier : United Nations Secretariat

Purchaser Ownership : -

Tender Value : Refer Document

Purchaser's Detail

Purchaser : UNITED NATIONS CHILDREN'S FUND
1st Floor Lilunga House Somhlolo Road Mbabane Tel: 407-1000 Fax: 404-5202
Swaziland
Email :mbabane@unicef.org
URL :http://www.unicef.org/

Tender Details

Tenders are invited for Consultant - Impact Evaluation of Teen Clubs program for Adolescents Living with HIV (ALHIV) in eSwatini (Swaziland).

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Background and Justification As recognized by the 2010 UNAIDS report “Children and AIDS", Teen Clubs have become a global model of excellence for the provision of care and support to HIV-positive adolescents. Per the UNAIDS Report, there is an opportunity to assist HIV-positive adolescents as they approach adulthood and begin to engage in relationships, initiate sexual activity, consider marriage and perhaps start a family. Whether these adolescents are the long-term survivors of mother-to-child transmission, now grown up, or were infected through sex or injecting drug use during adolescence, there is need to identify adolescents living with HIV and provide them with care, treatment and support before they progress to AIDS-associated illnesses. Such support include specific support needs, including psychosocial and community-based support that extends beyond clinical services. Baylor College of Medicine Children’s Foundation known as Baylor Swaziland initiated the teen club model in 2006 ahead of the UNAIDS report. This best practice is in fact cited in this report. Teen clubs are support groups for adolescents living with HIV established to empower Adolescents Living with HIV (ALHIV) to live positively and to successfully transition into adulthood. Adolescents value the opinion of their peers more than other age groups and in teen clubs empowered Teen Leaders deliver a positive, informed message to the peers. Teen Clubs provide fun educational activities focusing on life skills, healthy relationships and building confidence. These forums allow teenagers to learn to constructively express themselves and discuss issues regarding their health without fear of stigmatization. From 2011, with financial and technical support from UNICEF, Teen Club sessions have been conducted to provide psychosocial support to male and female adolescents through teen club support services. During the period, August 2011- April 2018, UNICEF has provided funding to the tune of USD258, 162.59. Baylor Swaziland builds teen leadership capacity to support knowledge growth and leadership. This is done through semi-annual teen leadership training and encouraging peer leadership with in Teen Club activities.The Teen Clubs are functioning across the 3 Baylor clinics-Centres of Excellence (CoEs), namely Mbabane CoE, Nazarene Raleigh Fitkin Memorial RFM Hospital CoE, and Hlatikhulu CoE and Siphofaneni. Teen Club meetings are generally held once a month (on Saturdays) at each site. To encourage participation, transportation reimbursement and refreshments are provided for the adolescents attending meetings. Approximately 800 teens are enrolled in the programme supported by UNICEF/Baylor and each month hundreds of teens participate in sessions at all four clinic locations.In addition to the these sites, there are seventy-seven (77) other health facilities currently having teen clubs supported by other partners including the PEPFAR clinical partners in all the four regions. According to the MoH 2017 annual HIV report, 3742 adolescents are enrolled in health facility teen clubs.The Ministry of Health (MoH) has adopted the teen clubs approach as a promising practice to enhance adherence to ART among adolescents and led the development of teen club guidelines for use by programme implementers. The ministry provides overall policy guidance and quality assurance. It appears that teen clubs are effective in addressing the needs of adolescents who are on HIV treatment, however the effectiveness of these support groups have not been evaluated hence the decision to conduct an impact evaluation of the Teen Club project to provide benchmark estimates in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability of the project across the three Baylor clinics and Siphofaneni.

Justification The last evaluation of the intervention was undertaken in 2012. This evaluation made recommendations to improve the programme. Over the following years, new approaches to support Adolescent Living with HIV have emerging and these have influenced the way teen clubs are formed and function. Despite increasing interest by both government and non-governmental entities, the impact and the scalability of the whole approach has not been assessed.The findings from the evaluation will provide information for improving programming of the Teen Club initiative; provide guidance for transition of youth living with HIV to adulthood; and inform strategies for scaling up Teen clubs for ALHIV in Swaziland. The evaluation is in the UNICEF/Government work plan for 2018 and consultancy plan. This assignment requires highly specialized evaluation and documentation skills. As such, UNICEF Swaziland requires to recruit an individual consultant with this level of expertise to effectively conduct the assignment within the stipulated timeliness. More details of the assignment are available in the attached concept note. Revised Concept Note - ALHIV Teen club programme evaluation.doc

Scope of Work Goal and Objective: The overall objective is to determine the impact of the mixed sex teen club initiative in addressing needs of adolescents living with HIV.

The specificobjectives of the evaluation are: a)To provide current status of the functioning of the Teen Clubs, membership (age and sex), type of activities conducted, trained teen leaders (including sex disagregation) at each site, and the management and mentoring aspects.b)To assess the quality of outputs, outcomes and results of the project related to knowledge, attitude and practices among active and former Teen Club members in the four facilities, on issues related to their health and well-being.c)To determine the effectiveness of the teen club model in providing support to adolescents in disclosing their status, transitioning between pediatric and adult care and treatment services, acquiring a quality HIV information and education, adhering to treatment and adopting safe sexual behaviors.d)To identify key and unique needs of adolescent boys and girls, the differentiated needs of rural and urban based adolescents and whether these were met by the programme interventions. e)To identify key good practices and key lessons learnt, identify gaps, what strategies and interventions to continue and/or discontinue, and to what extent and make recommendations for future improvement based on evaluation findings. Activities and tasks: The consultant will: •Undertake a literature review to inform aninception report•Develop an evaluation protocol (includes sample selection based on the agreed criteria, design and data collection tools) and present for submission to the National Health Research Board •Develop a data collection plan including a selection of respondents in consultation with Baylor college of Medicine, Swaziland.•Develop a data quality assurance plan• Prepare and share a field work plan: The consultant will prepare a detailed plan for field work and share the same in advance with UNICEF and Baylor college of Medicine, Swaziland.•Undertake data collection as defined in the agreed methodology in the inception report•Preparation of analysis plan: The consultant will prepare a detailed analysis plan that addressed the objectives of the evaluation. The analysis plan would be shared with the evaluation reference group before finalizing the same.•Report writing: The consultant will undertake data analysis, prepare the draft report and share with UNICEF, evaluation reference group, and Baylor for comments and suggestions. •The consultant will present the evaluation report at stakeholder validation meeting, for comments and inputs•The consultant will incorporate the comments and submit the final report to UNICEF.

Work relationships: The consultant will work under the supervision the Chief, Youth and Adolescent Development and under the guidance of an Evaluation Reference Group, comprising of UNICEF, Ministry of Health and other partners

Outputs/Deliverables

1. Deliverable: Draft inception report (first draft) with data collection tools (questionnaires, Interview Guides, etc). Finalize inception report and seek ethics approval. Timeline/Deadline: 05 August 2018

2. Deliverable: Final inception report Timeline/Deadline: 10 August 2018 Schedule of payment: 30% of contract amount

3. Deliverable: Draft evaluation report shared withEvaluation Reference Group and UNICEF (for UNICEF ESARO and HQ review and comments (first draft) Timeline/Deadline: 20 September 2018 Schedule of payment: 30% of contract amount

4. Deliverable: Stakeholder validation meeting report Timeline/Deadline: 10 October 2018

5. Deliverable: Final evaluation report with summary report and power point presentation Timeline/Deadline: 20 October 2018 Schedule of payment: 40% of contract amount

The payments will be made upon satisfactory completion of the deliverables mentioned above. The final remuneration will be negotiated by HR.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

a)Education:An advanced degree (Masters or higher) in Bio-Statistics, Public Health, Epidemiology, Economics, Social Science, or related field.b)Relevant work experience: •Demonstrated understanding of issues faced by adolescents and young people living with HIV, in Swaziland and/or Southern Africa.•At least 10 years combined experience of conducting research in HIV and AIDS or related field (including research on sensitive issu

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