Midwife Mentor, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, P2

The Position:

The Midwife Mentor will be based in Cox’s Bazar. The incumbent reports to the Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) Programme Team lead. 

How you can make a difference:

UNFPA is the lead UN agency for delivering a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person's potential is fulfilled.  UNFPA’s strategic plan (2022-2025), reaffirms the relevance of the current strategic direction of UNFPA and focuses on three transformative results: to end preventable maternal deaths; end unmet need for family planning; and end gender-based violence and harmful practices. These results capture our strategic commitments on accelerating progress towards realizing the ICPD and SDGs in the Decade of Action leading up to 2030. Our strategic plan calls upon UN Member States, organizations and individuals to “build forward better”, while addressing the negative impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on women’s and girls’ access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, recover lost gains and realize our goals.

In a world where fundamental human rights are at risk, we need principled and ethical staff, who embody these international norms and standards, and who will defend them courageously and with full conviction.

UNFPA is seeking candidates that transform, inspire and deliver high impact and sustained results; we need staff who are transparent, exceptional in how they manage the resources entrusted to them and who commit to deliver excellence in programme results.

Job Purpose:

UNFPA through partners has deployed 261 licensed national midwives to support government and non-government health facilities to provide midwifery-led Sexual Reproduce Health (SRH) services in Cox’s Bazar and Bhasan Char. The purpose of this position is to mentor the national midwives, midwife coordinators, midwife supervisors, their supervisors as well as the doctors that work with them to enable and capacitate evidence-based respectful midwifery-led care within an inter-disciplinary team for the refugee and host community girls and women.

You would be responsible for:

 1. Capacity development

 Conduct regular field visits to provide oversight and support to health facility managers and clinical coordinators to enable national midwives to provide quality comprehensive SRH services with a focus on maternal health. 

• Provide midwives, clinical coordinators and involved doctors relevant training, bedside/hands-on teaching, and mentorship. 
• Assess and respond to challenges in the enabling environment, including logistics and commodities and capacity or communicate to relevant support systems. 
• Facilitate/support the midwives to improve/expand services within their scope of practice.
• Participate in SRH working group, as needed. Develop guidelines for provision of SRH care to refugees and host communities, as needed. 
• Build capacity of midwives to provide initial stabilization of emergencies when needed, and evidence based routine maternity care, including respectful adolescent friendly ANC, delivery, and PNC services.
• Build capacity of midwives to provide comprehensive and quality SRH services including family planning, cervical cancer screening, MR/PAC, clinical management of rape, health response to sexual violence and prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections. 
• Coordinate training and mentoring sessions on all aspects of comprehensive SRHR. Support an effective response that integrates SRH (including Adolescent and Sexual Reproductive Health), gender-based violence (GBV) and data interventions. 
• Develop and support the implementation of systems to strengthen the quality of SRHR service delivery. 
• Build capacity of midwives to provide the needed data for monitoring and evaluation.

2. Advocacy and Partnership:

 Advocate within facilities for evidence-based respectful adolescent-friendly midwifery led SRH services. Coordinate with other partners at the facility level to synergize SRH care provision. Contribute to SRH working group meetings and within all other situational Reports as needed.

3. Project/programme Management Support

 Support SRH unit programme implementation with implementing partners

• Provide support to assessment of SRH needs of the affected population particularly as it relates to midwives, any needed. 
• Assist in developing/adapting protocols for selected areas in programme coordination (such as syndromic case management of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), referral for emergency obstetric care, midwifery, fistula repair, medical response to survivors of rape, counselling and family planning services, etc.). 
• Coach and support the midwives and other health care providers to strengthen the implementation of sexual and reproductive health priorities. 
• Provide inputs for Situational Reports and other communication products, as required.
• Conduct monitoring/mentoring visits and ensure a systematic approach for tracking barriers, challenges, and progress within facilities.

Qualifications and Experience: 

Education:  

Advanced university degrees in midwifery, nursing, medicine or International Confederation Midwives (ICM) standard midwife. 

Knowledge and Experience: 

• At least 2 years’ full scope clinical midwifery experience. 
• Experience with mentoring and training 
• Technical knowledge of current developments in sexual and reproductive health care 
• Strong expertise in capacity development 
• Knowledge and understanding of health care in low resource settings, particularly in the areas of reproductive health. 
• Exceptional interpersonal, communication, networking, and negotiation skills. 
• Ability to express clearly and concisely ideas and concepts in written and oral forms. 
• Experience in the usage of computers and office software packages (MS word, Excel, etc.), experience in handling web-based management systems.

Languages: 

Fluency in English; knowledge of other official UN languages is preferable.