Emergency Psychosocial Officer ER-027

Job Location:

Job Description:

***NOTE*** - THIS POSITION IS TO APPLY TO A STAND BY ROSTER FOR INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS EMERGENCY RESPONSE TEAM (ERT).

Candidates selected for this position will be placed on the ERT standby roster and may be called when the International Medical Corps ERT responds to an emergency. This position is not compensated unless candidates are responding to an emergency response.

When catastrophe hits, International Medical Corps is often one of the first humanitarian aid organizations on the scene—providing rapid and effective aid that saves lives, reduces suffering, and promotes self reliance.

International Medical Corps has established an International Emergency Roster to ensure that emergency positions are filled in a timely manner with professionally qualified, gender balanced, geographically diverse, linguistically able and a highly motivated corps of professionals. The team includes coordinators, logisticians, doctors and water and sanitation experts. It also includes specialists who focus on protection, prevention of sexual violence and aid for rape survivors and mental health.

Emergency Response Team (ERT) members are always on standby to deploy to a crisis within 72 hours, whether they are launching into new areas or lending support to International Medical Corps teams already on the ground.

International Medical Corps maintains a roster of staff which is updated on regular basis in order to include new staff into the system. This also provides an opportunity for the existing staff to update their areas of expertise and other relevant information.

Through this expression of Interest, applicants are encouraged to submit their profiles so that their information is readily available in the International Medical Corps applicant tracking system.


ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:
1. Conduct/participate in a Psychosocial needs assessment among the affected populations. This will include baseline assessments consistent with IASC guidelines and MHPSS WHO assessment toolkit (e.g. rapid community based assessment of psychosocial needs).
2. Join or initiate emergency interagency coordination mechanisms for the provision of mental health and psychosocial support (IASC Reference group in coordination with IMC Mental Health and Psychosocial Advisor)
a. Share relevant information.
b. Plan joint assessments and response strategies
3. Collaborate with existing government structures and local authorities organizing emergency response
4. Identify suitable local partner organizations and institutions for joint MHPSS work
5. Develop the strategy and mechanisms to integrate a psychosocial component into IMC programmes in keeping with IASC guidelines of mental health and psychosocial support in emergencies
6. Identify and where appropriate collaborate with existing indigenous healing services
7. Facilitate emergency psychosocial support as needed to affected population (precise programming depending on identified needs, existing services and capacities and actions of other agencies)
8. Train ERT and national staff in key aspects of psychological first aid and relevant aspects of IASC guidelines (1/2 day)
9. Initiate training of identified staff in appropriate skills ( e.g Psychological First Aid, community psychosocial support skills, social work skills)
10. Assist with the development of proposals
11. Hire national staff to implement emergency response and future programmes