ThaiNGO

Consultant for PROMPT Project Final Evaluation

1.          PROJECT SUMMARY

Type of evaluation:        External final evaluation and end-line assessment

Name of the project:     The Promoting Safe and Child-Friendly Legal Mechanisms and Pathways for Child Victims of Trafficking expanding Improving (PROMPT) Final Evaluation and End-line Assessment

Project Start and End dates:      August 1, 2018 – October 31, 2021

Project duration:            3 Years 3 Months

Project locations:           Bangkok, Pathumthani, Nonthaburi, Chiangrai, Phitsanulok, Naknonratchasima, Ranong, Songkla, and Surathani Province, Thailand

Thematic areas:              Child Protection

Sub themes:                    -

Donor:                             Porticus

Estimated beneficiaries:Direct beneficiaries 108, Indirect 1,200

Overall objective of the project:

Save the Children’s PROMPT project work to ensure child victims of trafficking experience safe, child-friendly, and gender-sensitive legal systems and processes to improve their ability to provide compelling testimonies, and increase the likelihood of successful prosecution of perpetrators. 

2.          INTRODUCTION

This document provides a Terms of Reference for the Final Evaluation and End-line Assessment of the Promoting Safe and Child-Friendly Legal Mechanisms and Pathways for Child Victims of Trafficking (PROMPT).

The PROMPT is funded by Porticus to implement from August 1, 2018 to October 31, 2021. The project aims to ensure that child victims of trafficking experience safe, child-friendly, and gender-sensitive legal systems and processes, which will improve their ability to provide compelling testimonies, and assist in the rightful prosecution of perpetrators. It aims to institutionalize child- and gender-sensitive approaches in the training for the Government of Thailand’s social officials (including social workers, psychosocial workers, and shelter workers who care for children), and legal officials, as well as through advocacy for child- and gender-sensitive legal policy.

The primary purpose of this consultancy is to conduct a final evaluation of the PROMPT project to understand the extent to which the project has achieved the intended outcomes. More details on the project background, evaluation scope, key questions, intended methodology, reporting and governance, key deliverables and timeframes for its implementation are provided in the sections that follow.

3.          BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

Child victims of trafficking seldom receive legal support which is adapted to their specific needs as children, their age, and/or gender. Children involved in legal processes tend to lack a clear understanding of their rights to protection and their cases’ proceedings. They often have difficulty remembering previous testimonies provided to the judge, which can make it more difficult to prosecute perpetrators of trafficking.

PROMPT is part of SC’s holistic effort to address the unmet needs of child victims of trafficking in Thailand – an especially vulnerable group that is not only at risk of being harmed by traffickers, but also of being treated insensitively by government service providers.

In our previous Porticus-supported Improving Legal Systems and Follow-Up of Trafficking (I-LIFT) project, we piloted the training and implementation of child witness support to limited number of social and legal officials. This child witness support contributed to the successful verdict against perpetrators in the high-profile Hua Sai case. PROMPT aims to scale up this impact by institutionalizing child- and gender-sensitive approaches into the broader scope of legal support services provided by a wider range of government social and legal officials.

Together with the Human Rights for Development Foundation (HRDF), we map out the existing legal system and processes for child victims of trafficking, assess the capacity of relevant duty bearers, and review the existing training provision for social and legal duty bearers. This includes an assessment and holistic child-witness support services during the legal process. 

We develop training modules on child rights and child- and gender-sensitive approaches with and for key government agencies, such as the Division of Anti-Trafficking in Persons (DATIP), and train their staff. We have also provided direct legal support to selected child victim cases to help build evidence of good practice for advocacy. Furthermore, SC and HRDF have worked with trafficking networks join forces in advocacy for policy changes in favour of child-friendly legal systems and processes.

Brief program outline

The PROMPT project contributes to achieve the following goal and outcomes:

Overall goal: Child victims of trafficking experience safe, child-friendly, and gender-sensitive legal systems and processes to improve their ability to provide compelling testimonies, and increase the likelihood of successful prosecution of perpetrators. 

Outcome 1:  Child rights and child- and gender-sensitive approaches are embedded into the existing training modules involving girl and boy victims of trafficking

Outcome 2:  Legal system and processes for girl and boy victims of trafficking are safe, child-sensitive, and gender-sensitive 

Outcome 3:  Government policy and procedures respect the rights and needs of girl and boy victims of trafficking, and encourage more child participation in court cases.

4.          SCOPE OF EVALUATION

4.1        Purpose and key questions

SC intends to conduct a final (external) evaluation of PROMPT project to generate substantive evidence-based knowledge by identifying and documenting good practices and lessons learned from intended impact and unintended consequences of the project interventions. This evaluation is intended to assess the extent of change that has taken place in the lives of targeted children, quality of services provided, related policy changes and implementation/response to the COVID-19 pandemic, sustainability of its program, and identify the challenge and limitation of legal service providers in supporting trafficking victims, particularly child victims. The results from this evaluation will be highly useful in providing recommendations for the Thai Government, project partner, and stakeholders as well as future strategies for Save the Children to improve the work with child survivors of trafficking in Thailand as well potential opportunities for partners to sustain and strengthen their legal assistance for adult and child victims of trafficking, and technical capacity building programme together with the governments and other key anti-trafficking stakeholders. 

The results will define key learning and lead the design of the next phase of future child protection program. To ensure objectivity and credibility, the evaluation is to be led by an external consultant who has made no prior commitment or contribution to the project. The evaluation is expected to take place from August to October 2021.

The overall objectives of this consultancy include:

• Evaluate project performance, including progress and achievements towards the project goal and objectives, the overall impact of the project, including unintended consequences and the factors that influenced change at all levels of the outcomes framework.
• Measure and report against the project outcome indicators, baseline and progress report to create end line information
• Map opportunities to sustain legal services, particularly child-sensitive legal services
• Optional: to assess governments and other key anti-trafficking stakeholders on their commitment, capacity, and opportunity to sustain and strengthen their legal assistance to trafficking victims in order to refine project’s sustainability strategy.
• Additional: identify the challenge and limitation of legal service providers (governments and other key anti-trafficking stakeholders) in supporting child and adult trafficked victims.
• Consolidate key success stories and lessons learned from the project e.g. 2-3 pages of case review report and children’s legal practice and documentation of legal loopholes that are hindering children’s access to full compensation and other rights i.e. legal status, right to work, right to develop.
• Assess to what extent the project has made impacts to change at policy level and/or advocacy with local and national government
• Provide recommendation to SCI management, program team, and strategic partners for project adaptation, scale up and sustainability.

The Evaluation team will be required to undertake consultation with the SC MEAL Coordinator and the Child Protection Technical Advisor at the commencement of the assignment in order to further refine the evaluation questions.

4.2        Scope

Due to the changing context and often restricted access within the government’s Welfare Protection Centre for Victims of Trafficking located in eight provinces, namely Pathumthani, Nonthaburi, Chiangrai, Phitsanulok, Naknonratchasima, Ranong, Songkla, and Surathani Province, and the resurgence of COVID-19, the evaluation team will be requested to prepare alternative evaluation method, i.e. remote data collection and evaluation, with support from Save the Children, in case the face-to-face data collection cannot be done.

4.3        Stakeholders/audiences

The main stakeholders/targeted audiences for this evaluation are:

The Evaluation team will be required to propose:

1.           Conduct data validation workshop with relevant child protection stakeholders to crosscheck the quality and correctness of the data collection.

2.           How the evaluation findings will be shared with each of the different stakeholders in the table above, particularly outlining how reporting back to beneficiaries and children will be conducted in an accessible and child friendly manner.

4.4        Secondary Questions

The evaluation should include an assessment and discussion around relevancy, effectiveness, efficiency, impacts, sustainability and gender-sensitivity as cross cutting issues as per the following framework and learning questions:

a) Relevance:

• To what extent have the project interventions including its objectives and activities been responsive to the needs of child and adult survivors of trafficking through capacity building of government staff and legal officials.
• To what extent have SC integrated broader inclusion concerns and child safeguarding issues into the design and implementation of its interventions?

b) Effectiveness:

• To what extent has the project been effectively achieving its goal and outcomes?
• What were the barriers to the achievement of the project goal and outcomes?
• Were there any unintended outcomes? 
• How is the effectiveness or impact of the project compared to the goals planned?
• How effectively and appropriately have we worked with government organizations, partners and target beneficiaries and involved them in relevant stages of the project?

c) Impact:

• To what extent has the PROMPT project had an impact in the lives of targeted child and adult survivors?
• What changes in policies, practices, knowledge and attitudes have occurred with targeted government staff through the support of the project?
• How have the needs of target beneficiaries been addressed from the project? What significant changes have occurred?

d) Efficiency:

• Were objectives achieved on time? (and budget)
• Were activities cost-efficient?

e) Sustainability:

• To what extent can the governments and other key anti-trafficking stakeholders able to sustain (Continue or replicate) the project activities, models, initiatives, results and effects at the conclusion of the project?
• What are challenges and limitations of legal service providers (governments and other key anti-trafficking stakeholders) in continue their support to adult and child trafficked victims in the current situation and in future?

f) Cross cutting issues Participation, Gender, Safe programming and inclusion

• What were the protection measure undertaken in project implementation i.e. child safeguarding policy, child participation and best interest in the implementation?
• To what extent have SCI integrated gender and social inclusion (i.e. disability) concerns and child safeguarding issues into the design and implementation of its interventions?

5.          EVALUATION METHODOLOGY

5.1        Research design and sampling

The suggested research design for this evaluation is a mixed methods design including participatory methods if and where possible. Both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis for addressing each of the evaluation criteria. SCI anticipates the methodology to include a review of project documents, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with relevant stakeholders including beneficiaries, observations, and review of project monitoring data. The consultant is encouraged to propose additional methodology that they consider appropriate to the project, which is subject to Save the Children’s approval and must meet ethical guidelines (Annex I).

The evaluation will focus in the targeted areas as mentioned above. It will involve child and adult survivors of trafficking, project partner organizations and government counterpart, and SCI project team. Participants in the study will be selected through purposive sampling.

5.2        Data

All primary data collected during the course of the evaluation must be disaggregated by sex, age, people with disabilities, status and location and inclusive of children’s representation.

Save the Children has existing data collection instruments and tools that can be drawn on in the evaluation. These will be shared with the evaluation team.

Save the Children will not provide enumerators to assist with primary data collection. Data triangulation is expected for this evaluation. It will be a requirement of the Evaluation team, including qualified translators, to source additional external data sources to add value to the evaluation, such as consultations with partners and review of project documents. 

A range of project documentation will be made available to the Evaluation team that provides information about the design, implementation and operation of the Program. Example of documents include previous evaluations, progress report, MEAL plan and logical framework.

5.3        Ethical considerations

It is expected that this evaluation will be:

• Child-friendly and participatory. Children should be meaningfully involved in the evaluation as a holistic process and not only as informants. Refer to the Practice Standards in Children’s Participation (International Save the Children Alliance 2005); and Global Indicator technical guidance (SCI M&E handouts Package, Volume 2).
• Inclusive. Ensure that children from different ethnic, social and religious backgrounds have the chance to participate, as well as children with disabilities and children who may be excluded or discriminated against in their community.
• Ethical: The evaluation must be guided by the following ethical considerations:

• Child safeguarding – demonstrating the highest standards of behaviour towards children
• Sensitive – to child rights, gender, inclusion and cultural contexts
• Openness - of information given, to the highest possible degree to all involved parties
• Confidentiality and data protection - measures will be put in place to protect the identity of all participants and any other information that may put them or others at risk.
• Public access - to the results when there are not special considerations against this
• Broad participation - the relevant parties should be involved where possible
• Reliability and independence - the evaluation should be conducted so that findings and conclusions are correct and trustworthy

It is expected that:

• Data collection methods will be age and gender appropriate.
• Evaluation activities will provide a safe, creative space where children feel that their thoughts and ideas are important.
• The Evaluation team will adhere to the Save the Children Child Safeguarding, Data protection and Privacy policies that are required throughout all project activities.

6.          EXPECTED DELIVERABLES

The evaluation deliverables and due dates (subject to the commencement date of the evaluation) are outlined below. The lead evaluation consultant will advise the PROMPT Project Coordinator immediately of any risks or issues that may impact on their ability to provide the deliverables by these due dates.

Deliverables and Due Dates

*All reports are to use the Save the Children Evaluation report template. Please also refer to Save the Children technical writing guide.

** The Evidence to Action Brief is a 2-4-page summary of the full report and will be created using the Save the Children Evidence to Action Brief template.

All documents are to be produced in MS Word format and provided electronically by email to the SC PROMPT Project Coordinator, MEAL Coordinator, and Child Protection Technical Advisor.  Copies of all PowerPoint presentations used to facilitate briefings for the project should also be provided to Save the Children in editable digital format.

7.          REPORTING AND GOVERNANCE

The consultant will report to the SC PROMPT Project Coordinator. Additional technical advice will be provided by the Child Protection Technical Advisor, MEAL Coordinator and technical team from Save the Children members. Save the Children should approve all plans and documents developed by the consultant.

The lead consultant is to provide reporting against the project plan. The following regular reporting and quality review processes will also be used:

• Regular email at least once a week to the Save the Children PROMPT Project Coordinator documenting progress, any emerging issues to be resolved and planned activities for the following week.

At the end of the field visit, the evaluator will hold a meeting with the project team and project partners to discuss the preliminary findings of the evaluation exercise.

A draft report should be submitted for feedback and comments. The report should be written in English and approximately 30 pages with executive summary (appendices not included). The final evaluation report will comprise the following contents:

• Table of Contents
• List of Acronyms
• List of Tables
• Executive Summary
• Background and context
• Introduction
• Literature Review
• Scope of Evaluation
• Research Design and Methodology
• Data analysis
• Key Findings
• Key success stories and lessons learned from the project
• Conclusions and Recommendations
• Annexes

• Evaluation TOR
• Inception report including work plan and budget
• Project Logical framework
• Evaluation matrix and tools
• List of people involved – including list of key informants interviewed  
• Raw data  

The consultant will revise the report according to the agreed feedback and comments.

The final report will be assessed against Save the Children’s Evaluation Report Scoring checklist (Annex II). The MEAL Coordinator and Technical Advisors will review and sign-off for final submission to the Program Director, who will be accountable for approving the Final Evaluation.

8.          CONSULTATION

Key Save the Children stakeholders to be involved in the evaluation are the PROMPT Project Team; MEAL Coordinator; and Child Protection Technical Advisor.

External stakeholders to be consulted for key informant interviews and data validation meeting include representatives from the following partners and authorities: HRDF, ASW, and DATIP. The PROMPT Project team will work closely with the evaluator to identify key representatives and coordinating the key informant interviews and data validation meeting as appropriate.

9.          EVALUATION TEAM

To be considered, the Evaluation team members together must have demonstrated skills, expertise and experience in:

• Masters’ degree in Social sciences, education, international relation or relevant area to the project.
• Proven experience designing and conducting high quality project evaluations based on OEDC-DAC evaluation criteria
• Proven ability and track record conducting ethical and inclusive research with vulnerable populations while ensuring rigorous ethics, integrity, and safeguarding especially when working most vulnerable groups;
• Thai or international consultant who has experience to work in Thailand
• Ability to work independently and meet tight deadlines
• Language proficiencies required include: English and Thai; kindly include a clear plan for language proficiencies in the team and/or translators included in the team
• Flexibility to travel

There is a high expectation that:

• Members (or a proportion) of the evaluation team have a track record of working together.
• A team leader will be appointed who has the seniority and experience in leading complex evaluation 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 evaluation over the period.
• The team has a strong track record of working flexibly to accommodate changes as the project is implemented.

Applications for the consultancy should include:

• Expression of interest: stating candidate skill and experience suitable for the consultancy (max 1 page)
• Technical and financial proposal: Outline of evaluation framework and methods, proposed timeframe, work plan and budget (max 4 pages; applications over limit will be automatically excluded).
• CV of proposed individual/s and one piece of evidence of similar evaluation carried out previously

If you are interested in this evaluation, please submit a proposed plan for evaluation design and implementation with detailed schedule and proposed budget (consultant fee and all proposed expenses including translators (if lead candidate is International consultant) by 19 July 2021.

Submissions should be addressed to: THA_Procurement_BKK@savethechildren.org