Review Objective/Questions

How to become more effective in influencing national as well as local policies for greater adoption of CSSP is the key question for this review. To answer this broad question, several specific questions need to be answered including

• What are the different types of CSSP being adopted in low- and middle-income countries? This classification may include dimensions such as – the nature of “child sensitivity”, national/local CSSP, initiated by the government or other actors, targeted vs. universal etc.
• What contextual and procedural factors played critical roles in adoption of CSSP?
• What are the key entry points for Save the Children to promote CSSP vs. social protection coverage in general?
• Which strategic approaches are likely to be more successful in resulting adoption different forms of CSSP and in which contexts?

Method

This review is expected to include literature/desk review, key informant interviews and case studies. While the consultant will propose methods based on rigour and practicality, this section gives a few broad ideas. Literate on policy influence can provide conceptual framework as well as evidence for effective strategies to influence policy. For example, Oxfam (2020) report argues that developing an effective influencing strategy should include - 1) engaging people from the outset, 2) context and gender (disability as well) analysis, 3) understanding and analysing power, 4) focus areas for influencing, 5) power mapping, 6) choosing strategies and tactics, 7) evidence. A paper by Mayne et al (2018) focuses on use of evidence in policy influence to identify three of the key ways - “Evidence is more likely to influence policymakers when presented to them during ‘windows of opportunity’, when they are motivated to pay attention to and solve a problem”, “Identify the actors with the power to change policy, and the actors able to influence policymakers”, and “Use a wide array of tools to communicate effectively”.

The conceptual distinctions between general social protection and CSSP can also draw on both the literature on social protection and desk review of social protection policies. It is anticipated that the review will conduct “deep-dive” on a few cases of CSSP. These case studies can be on a few selected CSSP based on – a) whether it is a new social protection policy with limited child sensitivity, b) new CSSP policy/programme, c) incorporating child sensitivity in an existing social protection programme.

Key informant interviews should cover stakeholders from advocacy and campaigns, policy makers, practitioners, and researchers. The focus of these KIIs should be on their experience and views of how to effectively bring policy changes towards adoption of CSSP. A workshop can be organized to validate the findings and recommendations on strategies for CSSP. The consultant can also propose children’s participation in this work based on the need and/or feasibility of engaging children in the process.

Expected Deliverables

• Inception report outlining the approach/ methodology, workplan and contents of the report
• A report following the outline agreed in the inception report
• A workshop to validate the report

Study Management

The consultant(s) will work closely with the CSSP Technical Working Group and other relevant Policy Advocacy, MEAL and Programming colleagues. 

Team and Selection Criteria

The review can be conducted by an individual consultant or by a team of consultants with a lead consultant. To be considered, the team member(s) must have demonstrated skills, expertise, and experience in:

• Conducting strategy reviews on topics related to children’s wellbeing
• Demonstrated familiarity with social protection and CSSP literature
• Sound understanding of advocacy and campaign strategies
• Conducting ethical and inclusive studies involving marginalised, deprived and/or vulnerable groups in culturally appropriate and sensitive ways
• Managing and coordinating a range of government, non-government, community groups and academic stakeholders

go to method of application »

Method

The review is expected to use different types of documents (e.g. project proposals, technical/grant reports, evaluation reports) as the primary data source. Building on the previous review, a database can be created where the unit of observation is individual cases of adaptation/replication of the PwV Common Approach. The review should determine the important dimensions/variables for which information should be compiled before starting the manual desk review. Although the study may take an iterative approach in collating information, interviews of a few key informants at an early stage can be crucial in constructing the list of variables for completeness and feasibility. A few suggested dimensions for this data collation are listed here - background information (e.g., country, grant size, duration), type of adaptation (e.g., specific components of the common approach incorporated in the project), nature of the project (e.g., humanitarian vs. development, stand-alone intervention of PwV vs. as a component of other core activities, direct implementation/partnership, primary/secondary school), output/outcomes achieved. Information on all the dimensions should be systematically compiled for each case (wherever available). This data can be used for both quantitative (e.g., summary statistics of adoption of different components, correlates of full/partial uptake) and qualitative (e.g., identifying common challenges, examples of innovations) analyses.

For cases of PwV uptake that have (impact) evaluation reports, the review should discuss the findings along with the types of evaluations. Variations in the impact findings should be analyzed across relevant characteristics in the implementation of the PwV. This may include additional analysis of the data sets produced for those evaluations.

The review should incorporate meta-analysis for selected outcomes, e.g. those measured by the following indicators:

• Proportion of boys and girls aged 1-17 years who experienced any physical punishment and/ or psychological aggression by caregivers in the past month.
• % of male and female caregivers who believe that physical and humiliating punishment is necessary to raise children
• % of male and female caregivers who report positive caregiver-child relationships
• % of boys and girls who have improved psychosocial wellbeing
• % of boys and girls with increased resilience protective factors
• % of boys and girls who report positive caregiver-child relationships

The scoping for post-intervention/long-term impact should consider information on the quality of implementation (from monitoring data/interviews), evidence of short-term impact, and feasibility of a “comparison group” to establish causality.

Information gathered from these documents can be supplemented by primary data collected from key informants from country offices. This may include the Child Protection technical advisors in a few country offices and/or regional offices purposefully selected by the level of uptake of this Common Approach.

Deliverables

• Inception report outlining methodology, workplan and report structure
• Summary data of the cases of PwV Common Approach uptake
• A review report following the outline agreed in the inception report

Team and Selection Criteria

The review can be conducted by an individual consultant or by a team of consultants with a lead researcher. To be considered, the study team member(s) must have demonstrated skills, expertise and experience in:

• Designing and conducting systematic reviews
• Conducting studies in the field of child protection
• Sound understanding of the different methods of impact evaluation
• Conducting ethical and inclusive studies involving marginalised, deprived and/or vulnerable groups in culturally appropriate and sensitive ways
• Managing and coordinating a range of government, non-government, community groups and academic stakeholders

There is a high expectation that:

• Members (or a proportion) of the study team have a track record of previously working together.
• A team leader will be appointed who has the seniority and experience in leading complex study projects, and who has the ability and standing to lead a team toward a common goal.
• The team has the ability to commit to the terms of the project and have adequate and available skilled resources to dedicate to this study over the period.
• The team has a strong track record of working flexibly to accommodate changes as the project is implemented.

go to method of application »

Review Objective/Questions

The objectives of this review are - a) documenting the current situation of the uptake of the Safe School Common Approach in education programmes/projects, b) collating evidence of their effectiveness, and c) scoping opportunities for generating evidence of long-term impact. The specific questions that are expected to be answered from the review include –

• What are the variations in the uptake of the Safe School Common Approach? This will include an analysis of the adoption/adaptation of different components of Safe School that are more/less commonly being incorporated, their scale, and costs. Additional analysis may explore capturing variations across countries and types of awards, and documenting examples of inclusion of additional components or tweaking/innovation of existing components.
• What is the evidence of the impact of the Safe School Common Approach on children’s safety in schools? Building on the evidence available during the creation of this Common Approach, this review will collate new findings/insights that have been gained from the four years of implementation. For impact evidence, the review should also assess their quality in terms of attributing changes in outcomes to the Common Approach. Evaluation reports of the projects that included Safe School interventions would be the primary source of this information.
• Are there changes due to Safe School interventions that may sustain beyond the project period? Besides documenting specific pieces of evidence for sustainability (if available), this may include the “informed opinion” of the reviewer(s) to identify which projects/components/outcomes are likely to have a long-term impact. More specifically, the review is expected to identify opportunities for generating new evidence of the long-term impact.

Method

The review is expected to use different types of documents (e.g. project proposals, technical/grant reports, evaluation reports) as the primary data source. A database can be created where the unit of observation is individual cases of adaptation/replication of the Safe School Common Approach. The Common Approach Dashboard can be used as the starting point to create this database. After consulting the relevant documents for a few cases, the review should determine the important dimensions/variables for which information should be compiled. Although the study may take an iterative approach in collating information, interviews of a few key informants at an early stage can be crucial in constructing the list of variables for completeness and feasibility. A few suggested dimensions for this data collation are listed here - background information (e.g., country, grant size, duration), type of adaptation (e.g., specific components of the common approach incorporated in the project), nature of the project (e.g., humanitarian vs. development, stand-alone intervention of Safe School vs. as a component of other core activities, direct implementation/partnership, primary/secondary school), output/outcomes achieved. Information on all the dimensions should be systematically compiled for each case (wherever available). This data can be used for both quantitative (e.g., summary statistics of adoption of different components, correlates of full/partial uptake) and qualitative (e.g., identifying common challenges, examples of innovations) analyses.

For cases of Safe School uptake that have evaluation reports, the review should discuss the findings along with the types of evaluations. Variations in the impact findings should be analyzed across relevant characteristics in the implementation of the Safe School. If the data permits, the review may incorporate meta-analyses of selected outcomes. The scoping for post-intervention/long-term impact should consider information on the quality of implementation (from monitoring data/interviews), evidence of short-term impact, and feasibility of a “comparison group” to establish causality.

Information gathered from these documents can be supplemented by primary data collected from key informants from country offices. This may include the heads of education programmes in a few country offices purposefully selected by the level of uptake of this Common Approach.

Expected Deliverables

• Inception report outlining methodology, workplan and report structure
• Summary data of the cases of Safe School Common Approach uptake
• A review report following the outline agreed in the inception report

Team and Selection Criteria

The review can be conducted by an individual consultant or by a team of consultants with a lead researcher. To be considered, the study team member(s) must have demonstrated skills, expertise and experience in:

• Designing and conducting systematic reviews
• Conducting studies in the field of education, particularly in relation to child safeguarding
• Sound understanding of the different methods of impact evaluation
• Conducting ethical and inclusive studies involving marginalised, deprived and/or vulnerable groups in culturally appropriate and sensitive ways
• Managing and coordinating a range of government, non-government, community groups and academic stakeholders

There is a high expectation that:

• Members (or a proportion) of the study team have a track record of previously working together.
• A team leader will be appointed who has the seniority and experience in leading complex study projects, and who has the ability and standing to lead a team toward a common goal.
• The team has the ability to commit to the terms of the project and have adequate and available skilled resources to dedicate to this study over the period.
• The team has a strong track record of working flexibly to accommodate changes as the project is implemented.