TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL SUPPORT PROVIDER TO PROVİDE INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP SESSIONS FOR SUTP AND DISADVANTAGED TURKISH UNIVERSITY STUDENTS AND CAPACITY BUILDING TRAININGS FOR UNIVERSITIES’ PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELLORS IN THE SCOPE OF HIGER EDUCATION SERVICES PROGRAMME (HES) FUNDED BY EUROPEAN UNION REGIONAL TRUST FUND IN RESPONSE TO THE SYRIAN CRISIS THE ‘MADAD TRUST FUND’
1. BACKGROUND ON THE ‘HIGHER EDUCATION SERVICES PROGRAMME’
SPARK is the largest provider of scholarships for Syrian refugees in the Middle East.
The HES programme started by responding to the needs of hundreds of thousands of Syrian and local youth who were applying for just a handful of overseas scholarships. SPARK noticed that new regional approaches are needed to scale up access to higher (vocational) education, particularly within Syria, its neighbouring countries (Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq) and in Palestine. SPARK furthers the basic right to enjoy access to higher (vocational) education for Syrian, Palestinian and vulnerable young people from host communities in the Middle East. By providing a holistic approach to scholarships that involves education, skills training and work experience, HES is building an educated workforce of future leaders that can rebuild their communities and boost local economies.
SPARK works in close collaboration with local government counterparts, higher education institutions, and local partner organisations focusing on psychosocial support, economic empowerment and civic leadership. This way, our scholarships are tailored to the needs of the local economies and promote sustainable employment for our graduates.
2. BACKGROUND INFORMATION: BENEFICIARIES PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING
SPARK is always endeavoured to constantly improve the services and trainings offered to its students and contribute to a good overall study experience. Psychosocial support is an important element of this initiative along with the other components. Through psychosocial support, our aim is to protect students’ psychological well-being, increase their satisfaction, and thereby ensure that they become active and successful individuals in academic, proffesional and social life. Moreover, we also aim detecting the challenges students are facing, and in that way also prevent drop-outs and low academic success.
It is known that psychological problems such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are often observed within refugee populations. SPARK has recently conducted a study to identify the psychological well-being of the beneficiaries and identify those students who is in need of psychological intervention. As a result of the study, 53.8% of the responded students are identified as qualified as likely to be well, whereas at least 27.2% requires urgent mental assistance. In the outputs obtained from the individual psychological sessions implemented in our past projects; depression, adaptation problems, PTSD, Anxiety, Stress, Mourning etc. were among the most observed problems. Considering that the problems will increase as the psychological intervention is delayed, we believe that structured intervention methods will have positive effects on our beneficiaries.
SPARK is committed to learn from past implementations and improve its provided services. Given the expanded scope of work, SPARK has decided to commission a third party to implement individual and group sessions for beneficiaries who is need of psychological support, provide capacity building trainings for the psychological counselor in the universities’ psychological counseling and guidance centers and supervise them periodically to establish a sustainable psychosocial support system for the students in the long run.
- WORK PACKAGES AND DELIVERABLES
SPARK requires receiving following services from the service provider;
- To plan, implement and report the individual and group counselling sessions for 240 beneficiaries in need of psychological treatment in seven provinces in Southeast Turkey (Gaziantep, Şanlıurfa, Hatay, Kahramanmaraş, Mersin, Kilis and Osmaniye).
- Group sessions (psycho-education) will be organised for beneficiaries who is identified as in need of psychological treatment, however, not willing to receive individual counselling.
- To report provided sessions to the SPARK focal point monthly basis (reporting template will be shared by SPARK).
- To provide a report detailing the cases, most observed psychological problems, intervention methods, impact of the interventions methods and psychological recovery processes (respecting the privacy principle) at the end of the contracting period.
- To develop the capacities of psychological counsellors working at universities ‘psychological counselling and guidance centres by providing trainings in the fields of students’ psychological needs, trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder, psychological first aid, psychological self-care, and frequent psychological problems observed in refugee population.
- To provide psychological counsellors with regular supervision services regarding the cases they receive.
- The contract period will be one year. The provision of the service depends on the approval of the fund.
Total Sample Size: 240 SuTP and Disadvantaged Turkish university students & 10 psychological counselor
- PROFILE OF THE SERVICE PROVIDER
- RESPONSIBILITY
The service provider will work closely with the SPARK Programme Officer based in Gaziantep and in coordination with the SPARK Turkey team, also based in Gaziantep. The service will be presented and discussed with SPARK prior to the implementation. Communication and collaboration with the beneficiaries be closely coordinated with the SPARK focal point.
- PERIOD AND PLACE OF ASSIGNMENT
This assignment shall commence upon approval of the fund in Kahramanmaraş, Hatay, Şanlıurfa, Osmaniye, Kilis and Mersin. In total, up to one (1) year is foreseen. The service provider should be highly committed to the timeline and requirements included in this TOR. The service provider will ideally be based in the previously mentioned provinces, should this not be the case SPARK will not cover travel and accommodation.
- APPLICATION REQUIREMENT
To apply for this consultancy, candidates are expected to submit a bid, outlining their suitability and how the expected deliverables are planned to be achieved; a financial offer comprising a detailed budget breakdown of all necessary costs (item by item) to implement this service and including taxes; a sample of previous implementations/projects in the relevant fields; CVs of the implementers; contact details of at least three references; the portfolio of the organization/institute/counseling center.
- Please send your complete application to [email protected], mentioning “PSST04.168/2020” in the subject line by CoB, 7th February 2020. Incomplete applications are considered invalid. For further questions please contact to [email protected].
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