GBV Case Worker Assistant

Background/Context:

The IRC has operated in Syria since 2012, providing protection, health, economic recovery, and early childhood development programs in Idleb, Aleppo, Ar-Raqqa, Hassakeh, and Deir ez-Zor, with new programs expanding into Hama, rural Damascus, and Homs. With a team of over 700 members, the IRC has established trust and strong community relationships, ensuring access and effective service delivery. It plays a significant role in Syria’s NGO, donor, and coordination forums, holding key positions and adapting to the evolving context.

With the new realities under the new government, as of December 2024, the IRC has deployed a team to Damascus to set up operations and engage in coordination structures for newly accessible areas across Syria—including parts of NES, NWS, and other previously unreachable locations in South and Central Syria, adjusting operations to maximize coverage and efficiency.

The IRC has been delivering protection programs in the northwest since 2013 and in the northeast of  Syria since 2014, focusing on Protection/Rule of Law (PRoL), Women’s Protection and Empowerment (WPE), and Child Protection (CP). These efforts include specialized case management, PSS, protection monitoring, service mapping, and advocacy. Collaborating with partners, IRC improves access to protection services, raises community awareness, and strengthens referral pathways. Protection capacity building, community outreach, and rapid response through mobile protection teams have also been provided since 2017.

Job overview:

IRC has an established program supporting the needs of women and girls throughout Al-Hasakah and Ar-Raqqa and DEZ Governorate in northeast Syria. The IRC provides direct counseling, psychosocial, and case management services to women and girls, with a particular focus on responding to the needs of survivors of gender-based violence (gender-based violence). The GBV Case Worker Assistant works in the Women’s Listening Center or women's protection and empowering safe spaces. They will provide direct case management, individual counseling, and group-based psychosocial activities in the space. Their objective is to provide age-appropriate case management services to GBV survivors, including supporting them in assessing and planning for safety, assessing their own needs, and developing a plan to address their individual needs, and safely implementing this plan.

Responsibilities:

• Always enforce the gender-based violence guiding principles, women's protection Empowering Case Management Guidelines, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee gender-based violence Case Management Guidelines (2017) throughout all case management and PSS interventions for women and girls.
• Ensure at all times women-, girl- and survivor-cantered approach throughout all activities and services you and the team provide in the women and girls Centers and safe spaces; this includes ensuring the confidentiality of survivors, and respect for their wishes and decisions.
• Provide age-appropriate case management, including assessment of women and adolescent girl’s needs; provide emotional support, basic, crisis counseling (and in some contexts further individual counseling); safety strategizing and risk assessing; development of action plans; support in pursuing services and support; safe, confidential and appropriate referrals in-line with the formal gender-based violence referral pathways; providing discretionary assistance (such as transportation, dignity kit items, urgent medical cost) if in-line with internal protocols and eligibility criteria to meet most urgent needs;
• Actively participate in the mandatory weekly team case management meeting at the Centre, and the individual supervision sessions with your casework supervisor (Senior Officer).
• Working with the Women’s Centre Officer and Snr women's protection Empowering Program Officer, regularly advocate for the provision of life-saving medical care including clinical management of
• Sexual abuse and psychosocial abuse, family planning and other sexual and reproductive health issues
• Family planning, and other reproductive health; and where available and of quality, work in close collaboration with the health service near the center to ensure women and girls have safe, discrete, and confidential access to/from the women's protection Empowering and health services via agreed upon safe and confidential referral procedures.
• Provide services to the child and adolescent girl survivors of gender-based violence, including case management as well as the best interest determination, age-appropriate engagement and decision-making by survivors, and Do No Harm analysis.
• Lead age-appropriate and specialized group emotional services to vulnerable women and girls.
• Collaborate with International Rescue Committee Community health worker where available, to mobilize women and girls around the centers and their services.
• Conduct assessments with adolescent girls, their caregivers, and other stakeholders to identify key concerns, needs, and opportunities
• Conduct ongoing focus group discussions with women and adolescent girls to advise program activities; and work with the WPE team in the Center to ensure a response to the evolving needs of women and girls and their communities.
• Identify concerns related to and support adherence to gender-based violence referral protocols and gender-based violence guiding principles and bring these concerns to the women's protection Empowering Response Officer.
• Maintain effective working relationships with relevant stakeholders including community leaders and other implementing partners.
• Complete monthly activity reports, according to guidance provided by the WPE Officer.
• Daily, where possible, update the women's protection Empowering Case Tracker with all new relevant case data; and submit it to the information management of gender-based violence Assistant/Snr women's protection Empowering Program Officer, at the end of each week.
• Maintain detailed and confidential case files, ensuring they are carefully and safely stored in the in-line with the Case Management Protocol, data protection protocols, and safety and ethical standards on gender-based violence information management; and ensuring the women's protection Empowering Case Tracker remains password protected.