Background

UNDP is the development arm of the United Nations system, with offices in 180 countries. Globally, the organization employs 17,000 people and manages a budget of USD 5 billion each year.
The UNDP office in Skopje employs a team of 65 and currently manages a portfolio of projects in social inclusion, environmental protection and good governance worth USD 15 million per year.

Women economic empowerment has been an important area of work for UNDP. Support to vulnerable groups is part of the biggest Social inclusion and employment portfolio with a number of interventions designed to address obstacles for active participation at the labour market. UNDP is working towards recognizing and addressing the different needs and barriers women and men face in the access to employment and quality services, as well as their perspectives to full integration as equal citizens in the society.

Women participating in both the formal and informal labour market have been hit hardest by the Covid-induced economic crisis. While women are overrepresented in fighting the pandemic, they also suffer more severely from the ongoing social-economic crisis. The crisis further exacerbated the weaknesses and gaps related to organization and quality provision of care services and further accentuated disproportional burden carried by women in households, worsening their opportunities to actively participate in the labour market and the society at all. The studies of the socio-economic impact of the health crisis show that the majority of jobs lost in the formal market are those of women, and that at the same time, women are forced to take up the unmet care services for the elderly, ill and people with disabilities.

With this intervention, UNDP is seeking for a national consultant – for coordination, monitoring and support in implementation of the pilot services in 10 selected municipalities, with a strong focus on women’s role within the families and enablers for their activation on the labour market. Consultant will also support the setting the model of a platform that will join family members and formal/non-formal care providers aiming at strengthening the position of the concerned families and formalization of the needed services within the national social protection scheme.

Duties and Responsibilities

Objective of the Assignment

The overall aim of this consultancy is to support the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy (MLSP) in piloting 3 identified social services that are currently not part of the formal system of services. Acknowledging and redistributing unpaid work and care will more specifically consider developing of i) relevant protocols for service provision, ii) standards and guidelines for service delivery, iii) overview and/or recommendation on training modules and iv) quality assurance mechanisms including minimum quality standards for each of the three identified services.

Recommendations, together with the piloted models, shall provide evidences for multi sectoral and multi-level technical support in providing policy advice at national and local level planning and policy design for pursuing formalization of care services and promoting care economy.

Scope of Work

The methodology of work will consist coordination, monitoring and support implementation of the  selected services in pilot phase for which the international consultant has set a clear recommendations and guideline/manual on practical models for formalization of three care services currently given at home, through identification of all elements needed for their delivery, including quality assurance aspects. In doing so, the bottlenecks in the related field will be identified and policy recommendations and/or guidance notes on the exact model of service delivery will be drawn.

Family members that currently act as service providers shall participate in bringing up challenges faced by them but also by other involved parties. In coordination with the MLSP, parents that are offering care to their family members will be supported with quality trainings, ensuring in this way increased quality of the services to the end-beneficiaries provided in their own homes. Options for flexible working arrangements should be one of the key elements while designing the services, opening space for activation of parents on the labour market, while enabling continuation of the service either completely from the external service providers or jointly (flexibly) with the parents involved.

Three selected services to be considered for formalization within the experience-based pilot process are:

1. Respite services – provided at homes, where parents/family members are offered up to 48 hours continuous service in their homes to persons with disabilities;
2. Household Assistance - home support for parents/family members that take care of elderly or persons with disabilities for 2-3 days during the working week, enabling work engagement of parents/family member;
3. Long-term ill care - home support to family members looking after ill persons, consisted of integrated teams of health and social workers.

The specific of the assignment is coordination and monitoring of the pilot stage of the services and ensuring networking among all relevant stakeholders in 10 selected municipalities. Pilot services will be introduced and implemented under the methodology of the developed blueprint by international consultant for the purposes of the project.

Work will consist of coordination, monitoring and support of the implementation of the selected services on a local level involving all national, local, public and private stakeholders.

Specific activities include:

1. Provide capacity building and technical support to all partners included in the piloting the services on a municipal level.

• Ensure the principles of gender equality and social inclusion are effectively reflected in all project activities;
• Provide technical expertise to strengthen and improve accessibility and quality of introduced new social/integrated services on a local level;
• Provide technical expertise in analyzing the needs and capacities of local partners to support the implementation of the pilot social services;

1. Set up a network of public and private service and training providers on a local level regarding the selected services.
2. Undertake preparatory activities jointly with the gender specialist in order to set a platform for care providers and options for formal association of concerned citizens and service providers.
3. Coordinate activities to support:

• Local public and private service providers;
• Local training providers;
• Potential and identified service receivers;
• Informal (family members) care and support providers in process of becoming identified and recognized as a formal care and support provider (individual or as a part of private service provider);
• Implementation of the steps for service delivery according the guidelines for the specific service;
• NGOs selected for service delivery on a local level;

1. Coordinate and monitor the implementing steps of the service delivery detecting all the challenging points and provide support in the process of finding a solution involving all relevant stakeholders.  
2. Collect data on the identified persons in need for care and support that are out of the formal care service and support the local government in development of the ,,Local Register of persons in need of different social services and local service providers,,.  
3. Monitor and report on progress implementation

• Monitor and report about the quality of the provided trainings to the new care providers;
• Monitoring and report about the matching process of the service users with the service providers;
• Monitoring about the formalization of the informal in-home care service providers;
• Monitoring and report about the quality of the services delivered to the final service users;
• Monitor and report about development and implementation of operational procedures inside the new service providers and formalization of the informal care provision

EXPECTED OUTPUTS AND DELIVERABLES:

The consultancy is expected to deliver the following outputs:

Institutional arrangment

The consultant will work under direct supervision by the MLSP and the UNDP Social Inclusion Unit Staff. He/she will be in regular communication with the supervisor through e-mail and will provide regular progress reports on weekly basis. All communication and reports will need to be prepared in English language. UNDP Social Inclusion Unit staff estimated lead time to review outputs, give comments, certify approval/acceptance of outputs, etc. shall be within 5 working days.

In course of performing his/her job, the consultant will need to meet with the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy, the Employment Service Agency, Center for Social Work in Selected municipalities, Institute for Social Activities, different NGO’s recognized as service providers to persons with disabilities and elderly, training providers etc. The UNDP office will assist with scheduling these face to face and online meetings as well as the needed support for the field visits that will be scheduled according the agreed work plan and time frame.

For the purpose  of the assignment UNDP will provide the blueprint for the services and all the relevant project documents developed by the international and local consultants for the purposes of the care economy and the formalization of the informal service delivery and the documents regarding the improvement of the already established services and the implementation of the  new services according the needs of the persons in need.

Duration of the Work

The assignment shall commence on 25th of Sep 2020 and the tasks should be completed latest by 20th of Dec 2020.

Duty station and travel

Total estimated time for this assignment is 50 working days as of which 30 days field work (10 per month) and 20 home-based.

Competencies

• Excellent communications and facilitation skills;
• Excellent analytical and negotiation skills.
• Excellent public speaking and presentation skills.

Required Skills and Experience

The selected candidates shall possess:

• Advanced university degree in development studies, social science, education, gender equality, inclusion of people/children with disabilities and related areas;
• Minimum 7 years of progressively responsible relevant experience in related fields of development, gender equality, social science, and related areas;
• Record of participation in at least 3 assignments of similar size and degree of complexity, such as preparation and/or analysis of interventions focused on gender equality, poverty reduction, employment, social service delivery to persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups;
• Participation in national/ international bodies or/ and associations working on gender, inclusion of people/children with disabilities and related areas, shall be considered asset;  
• Excellent writing and oral communication skills in English.

CRITERIA FOR SELECTION OF BEST OFFER

The award of the contract shall be made to the offeror whose offer has been evaluated and determined using Cumulative analysis methodology. When using this weighted scoring method, the award of the contract will be made to the consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

a) Being responsive/compliant/acceptable, and

b) Having received the highest score based on the following weight of technical and financial criteria for solicitation as per the schedule below:

* Technical criteria weight: 70%

* Financial criteria weight: 30%

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 49 points (70%) in the technical evaluation shall be considered for the financial evaluation.

For the considered offers in the financial evaluation only, the lowest price offer will receive 30 points. The other offers will receive points in relation to the lowest offer, based on the following formula: (Pn / Pl) * 30 where Pn is the financial offer being evaluated and Pl is the lowest financial offer received.

Technical Criteria:

DOCUMENTS TO BE SUBMITTED

Interested offerors are invited to submit the following documents/information to be considered:

1. Offeror’s letter, as per the following form LINK
2. Most updated CV with focus on required qualification as well as the contact details of at least three (3) professional references;
3. Brief description of why the individual considers him/herself as the most suitable for the assignment
4. List of relevant assignment as per the section criteria
5. Financial Proposal The financial proposal must be expressed in the form of lumpsum calculated per deliverables as listed under the Expected Outputs and Deliverables section.

Failure to submit complete set of all required documents will result in disqualification from the process.

Payments will be made only upon confirmation from UNDP on delivering on the contract obligations in a satisfactory manner.

Individual Consultants are responsible for ensuring they have vaccinations/inoculations when travelling to certain countries, as designated by the UN Medical Director. Consultants are also required to comply with the UN security directives set forth under dss.un.org.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE

Step 1

1. Click on the "Apply now" button

2. Input your information in the appropriate sections: personal information, language proficiency, education, resume, and motivation (cover letter). You can type in or paste your short Resume into the last box.

3. Upon completion of the first page, please hit "submit application" tab at the end of the page. On the next page, you will be asked to upload other required documents listed in the step 2.

Step 2

Interested individual consultants must submit the documents/information listed in the “Documents to submit section” above.

The system will allow only one attachment. Therefore, please upload all required documents as one file.

Failing to submit any of these documents may result in disqualification of the application.

Please note that shortlisted candidates might be interviewed.

If the deliverables are not produced and delivered by the consultant to the satisfaction of UNDP as approved by the responsible Portfolio Manager, no payment will be made even if the consultant has invested man/days to produce and deliver such deliverables.