Background and Context

SOS Children’s Villages International is the umbrella organisation for the global federation of 136 national SOS Children’s Villages associations, working in more than 2000 programme locations worldwide.  We work together with a single mission: to ensure that every child grows with love, security and respect.

Uniquely, we provide alternative care for children who have lost parental care (family-like care programme/FLC), and we work with vulnerable families and communities to help strengthen them and prevent separation of children from their families (family strengthening programme/FS). The family-like care programmes are usually organised in the form of a cluster of SOS families and/or foster families, where SOS parents care for small groups of children.

This terms of reference is developed to guide the evaluation of the outcomes (results) for children, SOS Mothers and communities after moving from a classical SOS Children’s Village  in to community/integrated SOS families in four  program locations in two MAs in ESAF, namely SOS Children’s Villages in Ethiopia and SOS Children’s Villages in Somaliland. The purpose of this evaluation is to assess changes in the lives of children and youths, their caregivers and their communities as a result of the integration of SOS families into the community. For this, positive or negative outcomes, scalability, efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of  integration of SOS families into the community will be documented in order to put together an evidence-based database on the benefit of this approach.The assessment findings will further inform the development of the regional social and physical integration position paper.

Scope

The evaluation will cover two mas in ESAF region, ma Ethiopia and ma Somaliland. In total, the evaluation will look into four program locations, three in Ethiopia and one in Somaliland. The integrated family-like care programme with its child programme participants, including young people participating in the youth care programme (youth facilities affiliated to the respective family like care programme), young people participating in different after care programmes (affiliated to the respective family based care programme) and main care givers/SOS mothers/aunts shall be included and participate in the evaluation. The evaluation should take place in a context where approximately 12 months after the integration of the SOS families from a traditional children’s village setting to community integrated settings.

Methodology and Approach

The evaluation should apply mixed methods: individual and group interviews with child participants and young people, SOS mothers/aunts, staff, community members using quantitative and qualitative data collections tools (e.g. structured and semi-structured interviews, focus groups discussion, network analysis, service mapping, PDB, satisfaction surveys, observations, photo documentation, or any other relevant methodology).

Roles and Responsibilities of the External Consultant

The consultant(s) will be responsible for doing the assignment making his/her own travel arrangements and covering other logistical matters. More specifically, he/she will be responsible for the following:

• Develop an inception report and present to a management team
• Prepare work plan for the study
• Recruit and assign study team in accordance with the technical proposal·
• Design and modify study design, identify data sources, develop data collection tools, undertake data analysis and report writing
• Present and submit draft study reports on time
• Incorporate inputs and feedbacks obtained from the workshop, produce final document both in hard and soft copy.

Deliverables

• Presentation of preliminary results to participating MAs and  IOR ESAF regional office team of SOS Children’s Villages International (virtual/face-to-face)
• First draft of the final report
• Final report
• Refined evaluation methodology and data collection tools

• A university degree and above in social sciences, development studies or economics, project planning and management background with educational credentials of study team members and team compositions with these diversified field of study/ discipline
• Proven competency (record of previous experiences) in project/programme evaluations (with certificates)
• Proven competency in monitoring and evaluation, including impact assessment or project evaluation
• A good understanding of development work
• A good understanding of child rights and issues affecting vulnerable children
• Good facilitation, organizational and interpersonal skills
• Proven experience in participatory processes
• Strong skills in coordinating teamwork
• Strong analytical and conceptual skills
• Excellent written communication skills
• Ability to transfer complex concepts and ideas into practical and simple language
• Ideally experience in organizing research processes with/for SOS Children’s Villages
• Proven gender expertise