INTERNAL ONLY: MHPSS Lead (Youth Mental Health + EASE)

The MHPSS Lead provides strategic and thematic leadership for War Child’s MHPSS work and its relate to a specific portfolio of Evidence‑Based Methods (EBMs). The role is accountable for the vision, quality, coherence, innovation, external positioning, and continuous improvement in their thematic area and on their assigned EBM portfolio. It ensures alignment with organisational strategy, the Partnership Journey Framework, internal quality standards, sectoral standards, frameworks, and humanitarian best practice. The role has oversight of an assigned EBM portfolio and its related partner onboarding journeys, thematic quality assurance and adaptive learning processes, while line managing thematic coordinators and guiding thematic coordinators and specialists.

What You Will Do

• Provide strategic leadership and vision in their thematic area of work, liaising with other thematic Leads where relevant. This includes driving development and use of thematic strategies, translating sectoral trends, evidence and standards into organizational direction and identifying emerging risks and opportunities in their thematic domain across relevant contexts and conflict phases.
• Shepherd the EBMs in their portfolio across the Partnership Journey, ensuring coherence, quality, learning and alignment with War Child’s Care System and organisational priorities, and effectively engaging with other departments, such as Partnerships & Programme Management, Research & Development, Engagement, Operations, etc, as well as teams in their own department (Humanitarian and MEAL) to ensure high quality deliverables
• Provide thematic authority and quality assurance to War Child’s work, particularly around the consistent application of programme quality standards during the EBM Cycle (the formative, development, feasibility and effectiveness phases of the Partnership Journey),aligning with internal frameworks, sector standards and the Core Humanitarian Standard.
• Maintain strategic oversight of assigned thematic and EBM portfolios, influencing allocation of resources and ensuring prioritisation and coherence on implementation, scaling, learning and adaptation across relevant contexts/clusters and with other thematic areas, leads, and their portfolios.
• Maintain strategic oversight of organisational capacity in the assigned EBM portfolio, including strategic thinking on capacity development and maintenance, and advising on prioritisation and resource allocation.
• Drive continuous learning, adaptation and improvement of EBMs, using evidence, quality data and learning agendas to inform decisions. This includes leading and/or facilitating the development and execution of learning agendas, as well as documenting and/or compiling lessons learned across clusters/projects/partners.
• Lead or contribute to relevant thematic and/or EBM learning activities, task teams, working groups and/or Communities of Practice, ensuring effective collaboration, delivery and shared learning.
• Lead and manage thematic Coordinators within the assigned EBM portfolio, providing direction, mentorship, performance oversight and professional development, as well as ensuring appropriate ways of working and matrix management with other relevant roles, teams or departments.
• Provide authoritative thematic leadership to partners, country teams and global colleagues, strengthening programme design, implementation and evidence use in all relevant contexts, including emergency responses.
• Represent and build up the profile and reputation of War Child's EBM Care System Portfolio and thematic expertise externally in global fora, strengthening sector engagement, inter‑agency collaboration and organisational credibility, and contributing to shaping policy and sector discourse.This includes establishing a vision and strategy for external representation influencing together with the appropriate teams and colleagues.

Role-specific Or Context Responsibilities

• Acts as primary internal and external thematic focal point for an assigned EBM portfolio.
• Lead the development, refinement and socialisation of strategies, policies, SOPs, tools and guidance related to the thematic area.
• Lead on thematic components of EBMs Partnership Packages and standard resources, providing content, inputs and advice in an effective manner and liaising with relevant teams and roles in this process.
• Ensure EBM alignment with internal programming quality standards and sectoral thematic standards.
• Contribute to mainstreaming safeguarding, accountability and participation standards within EBM guidance and tools, working closely with safeguarding and accountability and participation experts.
• Contribute with strategic thinking and collaborate with War Child staff and partners in support of an integrated approach to education, child protection and MHPSS within our Care System, as well as programming that accounts for sound MEAL practices and for cross-cutting issues, such as localisation, climate change, etc.
• Advise on the technical/thematic components of partnership agreements related to the EBMs in their assigned portfolio.
• Support scalable learning approaches (e.g. blended learning, training pools, ToT/ToF models), driving development of EBM learning trajectories and ensuring appropriate thematic/EBM content is provided to L&D experts.
• Contribute to onboarding process, including thematic and/or EBM training and mentoring to staff and/or partners where appropriate.
• Supports operationalization and implementation MEAL processes within their thematic area, including integration of Quality of Care indicators across EBMs.
• Contribute to knowledge and information management processes and deliverables, including content provision for communication materials, websites, newsletters, etc.
• Lead thematic inputs into organisational processes such as development and delivery of strategies, annual plans, etc at team, departmental and organisational levels.
• Collaborate closely with teams in their department (MEAL and Humanitarian) and with other relevant departments such as R&D, Partnerships, Engagement and Operations.

Knowledge, Skills, Experience

Education

• Relevant academic background in the thematic area (MHPSS) or a closely related field.

Experience

• Relevant experience in the thematic area, including in humanitarian or post‑conflict contexts.
• Demonstrated experience

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