Established in 1975 to assist refugees from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, Thailand hosts one of IRC’s longest-running country programs. Today, IRC serves various ethnic populations displaced from Myanmar with approximately 90,000 beneficiaries in Thailand. Operating from Bangkok and four field offices in Mae Hong Son, Mae Sot, Kanchanaburi, and Ratchaburi. IRC provides essential services the health, protection, and livelihoods sectors. IRC also seeks to create partnerships between community-based organizations, and provincial authorities in order to strengthen community-level interventions that improve refugee access to fundamental medical, financial, and legal services.
IRC provides primary health care and environmental health services in seven refugee camps in Thailand, including quality water and sanitation facilities, contributing to a healthy living environment for refugees living in these camps. The MHPSS program is part of the health program and currently supports individual counselling, mental health support groups, community awareness raising and wellness activities like yoga and meditation. The services are primarily delivered by a cadre called Camp Based Assistants (CBAs), who are refugee incentive staff who have received trainings and are supervised by IRC Psychosocial manager and supervisors.
The MHPSS Program Assessment Consultant will lead a technical review of the current MHPSS programs within the IRC Thailand program, identifying opportunities for improvement and supporting the team to identify ways to realign the program based on the findings from the assessment. The MHPSS Program Assessment Consultant will work closely with the Senior Health Coordinator, Health Coordinator and psychosocial manger and psychosocial team, who are based across the seven camps. A combination of in person and remote support is considered feasible.
Objectives
•Assess the current programmatic activities against the MHPPS pyramid and identify ways to shift strategies to those that require less specialized skills.
•Assess technical capacity of CBAs and IRC PSP team to conduct individual counselling sessions and review the current training package and coaching and supervision strategies used.
•Review the prescriptive practices for mental health patients and support development of plans for more rationale use of psychotropic medications
•Assess the capacity of MHPSS and design the plan to increase the capacity of MHPSS team to implement programs that will improve the wellbeing and functionality of mental health patients within the camps along the Thailand/ Myanmar border.
•Identify the areas of integration among psychosocial program and other departments (Reproductive and Child Health, Primary Health Care, Community Health, Women’s Protection and Empowerment and livelihoods.)
•Identify possibility of community involvement to enhance/ expand awareness of wellbeing of general population in terms of mental health.
Deliverables
•Report that outlines the findings of the assessment of programmatic activities, technical capacity of CBAs, and prescriptive practices within the MHPSS program in Thailand.
•Report that outlines feasible recommendations for improvements to the MHPSS program in response to the Objectives, including recommendations for training packages and supervision strategies for future CBA trainings.
Timeline
Expected start date: as soon as possible
Draft reports due date: one month following the start date
Final reports due date: end of assignment
Location
•Thailand – refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar border and IRC field offices in Mae Sot, Mae Hong Son, Ratchaburi and Kanchanaburi
