About HelpAge: HelpAge is a global network of not-for-profit organisation with the vision of a world where older people fulfil their potential to lead active, dignified, healthy and secure lives.
With more than 70 affiliates and 300 partners across more than 50 countries, the HelpAge network brings together hundreds of organizations worldwide to ensure that the older people are included in the programmes and policies of other INGOs, National Governments and regional bodies.
HelpAge works through six regional centers in delivering high quality programming, coordinating network members and engaging at national and regional policy level to advocate for the promotion and protection of the rights of older men and women.
In Africa HelpAge has two regional offices; the East West and Central Africa (EWCA) based at Nairobi and the Southern African (SA) region based at Pretoria.
The EWCA region has presence in 15 countries through its network members and in 6 countries it has presence through its country teams. Similarly in SA region HelpAge has presence in 6 countries through its network members and has a country office in Mozambique.
For the 2016-2020 strategic period; Health & Care of older people is one of the major thematic areas of interest for both the regions in Africa.
Context: HelpAge network works in both the regions in Africa. The HelpAge network has been implementing health projects to strengthen the capacity of local health facilities deliver age friendly health care services.
The experience gained from field level interventions has helped us generate valuable information to input to the health policies of the National Government and regional bodies like African Union and Southern Africa Development community.
This has entitled older men and women access to free health care, dedicating specific older people’s clinic days and home visits to ensure older people have access to diagnosis, referral and treatment for Non Communicable Diseases.
Working towards reform in the health care training curriculum, efforts are underway to ensure front line health care workers have the basic knowledge and understanding of geriatrics care.
In response to the threat of NCDs, Active Ageing Groups are promoting prevention and management of chronic conditions through affordable and sustainable community actions.
In addition to improving older people’s access to health care in the region, we have also developed the Health Outcome Tool (HOT) that measures the health outcomes of our interventions using a set of tools designed to conduct a self-assessment to build evidence by measuring the changes in older people’s health status as a result of increased access to age friendly health care.
Our work in some countries has resulted in improved health information management systems with better collection and presentation of health data from local health facilities.
In the past few years, two regional flagship projects involving the EWCA and Southern African regions of HelpAge titled: “Prevention and mitigation the impact of HIV & AIDS and poverty through strengthening the social protection Systems” supported by SIDA and ‘’Enhancing the capacity of Health Systems for Better Health Services for the Older People” supported by DfID have enabled us to engage more broadly combining community based actions led by older people, strengthening older people’s ability to monitor track and report health access with a range of policy influencing actions at national and regional level.
Furthermore the former project, has enabled us strengthen the link between vulnerabilities caused by HIV and AIDS can be addressed through a range of social protection measures.
While the latter has been critical in improving the link between social protection and health outcomes.
Both these projects were designed to allow greater flexibility in implementing context specific country level intervention and provide opportunities for wider learning will be completed by mid-2017.
We therefore plan to develop follow on regional programmes building on the gains made from the previous interventions and lessons learnt from them.
The proposals that we propose to develop would be modular in approach and cover the three broad areas that HelpAge focuses on viz.
a. Accountability of Health systems towards the needs and priorities of the older people,
b. vulnerability of older people to HIV & AIDS and promotion and protection of their Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights and
c. Healthy Ageing with specific focus on prevention and treatment of Non-communicable Diseases, HIV & AIDS and community based care.
The proposals would support HelpAge’s effort to mobilize resources in fulfillment of its Regional Strategic Priorities for the region to ensure that older people’s rights are promoted and protected through health Policies and practices in Africa.
Position Summary: The consultant will integrate approaches and learning from HelpAge and its network partners’ from the past and ongoing in the region and globally.
As part of the programme development process, HelpAge will expect the consultant to identify areas of potential innovations, synergies, and collaborations between actors and stakeholders (e.g. private sector, Government, local NGOs, international NGOs, universities/academia, policy/research institutes, etc.).
The consultant will take lead in conjunction with HelpAge and its partner’s staff, to develop a compelling, evidence-based proposal for submission to various donors by end of July.
The consultants should have prior experience of working in the region on health issues and a thorough understanding of and prior experience in competitive proposal writing for large institutional donors.
The consultant should preferably have prior experience working in NCD and older people’s issues.
The consultant will have access to the documentation from our earlier work on the subject including review reports and learning documents.
Deliverables:
By the end of the consultancy, the consultant is expected to deliver the following:
Review secondary literature on Health needs and challenges for older people in the region
Review HelpAge documents of previous projects supported by Comic Relief and Big Lottery and ongoing projects supported by SIDA and DfID.
Meet key Health stakeholders in the region to map the expertise of other stakeholders for possible collaborative proposals
Draft comprehensive technical proposals and budgets in the areas highlighted above that are modular in approach to suit the donor needs.
We expect the deliverables to be achieved by about (20 -30) days consultancy input including time needed for analysis of secondary literature.
Qualifications and Experience
An advanced university degree in Public Health and / or a related field.
Minimum 5 years’ experience in design of health programmes, proposal writing and or management of health programme preferably in one of the countries in the region.
Prior demonstrated experience of developing proposals for institutional donors and foundations working on health issue
Experience of working with Health Sector Authorities and stakeholders would be an advantage.
Previous experience of working with older people’s Health issues would be an added advantage.
Candidates with requisite qualification and experience should apply for the position with sample / evidence of earlier work done, their CVs and an indicative budget.
Resources:
The consultant would have access to the following resources (not complete) for secondary literature analysis:
Mid-term and end term evaluation Report of the “Prevention and mitigation the impact of HIV & AIDS and poverty through strengthening the social protection Systems” project
Mid-Term Evaluation Report of ‘’Enhancing the capacity of Health Systems for Better Health Services for the Older People”
External Evaluation Report of our NCD work in Tanzania
WHO Action Plan on NCD and Who Healthy Ageing Report
Regional and Country teams to support the process
Tax Liability: Settlement of any tax liability arising from this agreement will remain the responsibility of the consultant.
Deadline for submission of EoI and interpretation of ToR: 13th May, 2016.
Email for Applications: hr.ewca@helpage.org