Job Description

JOB DESCRIPTION: Program Officer-Counselling MCH - Building Bridges (BB) - Bhiwandi ABOUT SNEHA

A secular, Mumbai-based non-profit organization, SNEHA believes that investing in women's health is essential to building viable urban communities. SNEHA is 450+ people strong, innovative and progressive organization that works on health and nutrition in urban slum pockets with women and their families. SNEHA follows the life-cycle approach to health and nutrition, by intervening at critical junctures (adolescence, preconception, conception, pregnancy, postnatal, infancy and toddlerhood, family planning) to ensure improved health and nutritional outcomes for women and children living in some of Mumbais most vulnerable and deprived slums and in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) as well.

SNEHA recognizes that, in order to improve urban health standards, our initiatives must target both care seekers and care providers. We work with communities residing in informal settlements to empower women and communities to be catalysts of change in their own right and collaborate with existing public health systems and health care providers to create sustainable improvements in urban health. We have currently 11 programs running across SNEHA which are Maternal and Child Health (MCH), Public System partnerships (PSP), Empowerment, Health and Sexuality of Adolescents (EHSAS), Prevention of Violence against Women and Children (PVWC) (e) SNEHA Centre, SNEHA Shakti, Healthy Cities Project (HCP), Palliative Care, Livelihood Generation, Central Operations, Research and Information Management.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

Maternal and Child Health (MCH) - Building Bridges, is a focused Direct Community Intervention in 10,000 households in the three communities of Bhiwandi. The Maternal and Child Health (MNH) program of SNEHA has been working in Bhiwandi since 2016; directly working with in 10,000 Households (HHs) and indirectly working with the public health systems of BNMC spanning 12 intervention areas across 3 Health Posts and one state run - Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital. The MCH program is committed to improve the health status of women and children in the most vulnerable urban slum areas. The program has been working with the most vulnerable communities to fill in imbalanced gaps in accessing health care services between population groups and promote health and well-being. The program reaches out to married women in the reproductive age (MWRA) between the age of 15 to 49 years, covering women in the antenatal and postnatal stages, couples for family planning counselling and children in the 0-6 years age group for immunization, home based care of the low birth weight babies, nutrition, early and exclusive breast feeding and early identification and treatment for infectious disease. The MCH frontline workers conduct home visits to counsel pregnant women and mothers with infants, on antenatal and postnatal care, caring for new-born and immunization for children. They also organize community awareness activities like street plays, exhibitions and mass campaigns on topics like breastfeeding, complementary feeds, immunization and importance of handwashing. They also support the public health system during immunization camps, surveys for COVID-19, training of volunteers and regular capacity building
of government public health workers, sevikas of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs). ABOUT THE PROGRAM ON PREVENTION OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

SNEHAs Program on Prevention of Violence against Women and Children (PVWC) aims to develop high\xe2\x80\x90impact strategies for primary prevention, ensure survivors access to protection and justice, empower women to claim their rights, mobilize communities around zero tolerance for violence, and respond to the needs and rights of excluded and neglected groups. The Program prioritizes enhanced co-ordination of the state response to crimes against women through a convergence approach that works with government and public systems to reinforce their roles in assuring basic social, civil and economic security. Violence against Women in BB - MCH

Building Bridges - MCH is embarking on a new intervention of addressing violence against women by building an ecosystem of non-tolerance to violence against women - a socioecological approach with the involvement family and community members. This intervention will be implemented across the 10,000 households in the three major intervention areas alongside the Reproductive Maternal and Child Health Integrated model with a focus on identification of women survivors of violence and conducting prompt and appropriate referrals for services like counselling, crises intervention, legal aid etc. This new initiative will work on two major pillars of intervention:

Primary prevention: The primary prevention component will entail community outreach, mass awareness, and workshops with women to enable them to talk about difficult issues in their lives, integrating gender socialization as a part of understanding the different facets of violence.

b. Comprehensive service-delivery: The service-delivery component will entail establishing referrals for counselling and other services for women undergoing any form of abuse or violence. The project seeks to interface with government and non-government organizations to build networks and referral mechanisms for addressing issues of abuse and violence against women. THE PROFILE

The Counselling Program Officer (CPO) will be responsible for handling all gender based violence cases and its necessary interventions. The CPO will be responsible to coordinate with the program team i.e. the community organizers and the program officers for identification of cases from the area, conduct periodic community visits to understand the larger socio-economic, cultural conditions from where women survivors of violence hail from in order to integrate these aspects in the counselling. The counsellors role will be essentially based in the field and or a center where the candidate will be required to handhold and support women facing violence in carrying out psychosocial interventions. They will be involved in giving guidance in deciding the line of intervention for the women, connecting them to law enforcement machineries and other relevant public systems, conduct trainings and carry out case sharing meetings. This would also involve close


collaboration with the Program in SNEHA: Prevention of Violence Against Women and Children for any technical guidance and support to prompt redressal of the issue at hand and any such support.

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES:
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Offering crisis services, immediate relief and support, and long-term intervention (extended response) and services to women facing violence, as well as to family members and perpetrators. \xef\x82\xb7 Making home visits to the client in crisis, accompanying them to the service providers like health, legal and police, CWC, Protection officer. \xef\x82\xb7 Networking with other service providing agencies in the interest of the survivor of violence and making appropriate referrals (police, legal, health, and NGOs). \xef\x82\xb7 Administrative responsibility of maintaining case records, registers, writing referral letters, writing minutes, collecting, entering and sharing data with the Intervention team. \xef\x82\xb7 Data entry on a timely basis in the CommCare. \xef\x82\xb7 Preparing case studies. \xef\x82\xb7 Preparing PPTs, reports. \xef\x82\xb7 Short term and long term planning, monthly, quarterly and annual plans. \xef\x82\xb7 Handle the case sharing meeting within the group and with the seniors. \xef\x82\xb7 Conduct regular follow up with the clients. \xef\x82\xb7 Conduct periodic awareness events, campaigns, engage with the community on violence issues. \xef\x82\xb7 Adherence to SNEHA values, policies and guidelines. \xef\x82\xb7 Any other work that may be assigned to achieve the programmatic and organizational goals. \xef\x82\xb7 Conduct regular case-sharing meetings with the MAS/HC in the communities to help them understand and analyze case interventions and thus enable referrals from them. \xef\x82\xb7 Provide strategies on communication and negotiation skills to the MAS/HC to intervene in crisis situations and enable collective action thus evoking community support to victims of violence.

MANAGEMENT & REPORTING
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Report weekly to the Program Coordinator \xef\x82\xb7 Managing pictures and documents of meetings, activities and events on a timely basis. \xef\x82\xb7 Manage data and ensure data entry in CommCare. \xef\x82\xb7 Contribute to the organizational culture and work of SNEHA to an appropriate degree \xef\x82\xb7 Participate in the SNEHA activities .

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE
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Educational qualification: Masters Degree in the field of Social Science/counselling/Psychology/allied. \xef\x82\xb7 At least 3-5 years of work experience in crisis counselling and intervention. \xef\x82\xb7 Command over English and Hindi is necessary. Marathi-speaking skills are desirable.
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MS Office and computer skills are necessary. \xef\x82\xb7 Prior experience in working with survivors of violence against women is desirable. \xef\x82\xb7 Experience in handling court and police procedures is desirable.



SKILLS & COMPETENCIES
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Ability to work with different teams and a desire to learn and grow as a professional. \xef\x82\xb7 Strong negotiation skills, problem-solving and conflict-resolution abilities, especially when dealing with
clients and families. \xef\x82\xb7 Proven ability to work with a variety of stakeholders including, government organizations, the police,
community organizations, and other service providers. \xef\x82\xb7 Staying focused on goals to ensure desired outcomes. \xef\x82\xb7 Ability to stay calm, think clearly and give guidance in a crisis situation.

Applications to be sent via email to damini.pandey@snehamumbai.org with Subject line: Program Officer-
Counselling