Social Policy Specialist (Shock responsive Social Protection)

UNICEF Caribbean Multi-Country Office – Social Policy Specialist (Shock-Responsive Social Protection)

Vacancies

Current vacancies

Explore our current job opportunities

Contract type Fixed Term Appointment

Locations

Latin America and Caribbean Region Barbados Trinidad and Tobago

Functional Area

Programme Social Policy

Position level NO-3

Batch Recruitment (2 positions): Social Policy Specialist (Shock responsive Social Protection), NOC, FT, #138597 Trinidad & Tobago, #138584 Barbados, Multi-Country Office for the Caribbean

Job no: 596044

Contract type: Fixed Term Appointment

Duty Station: Bridgetown

Level: NO-3

Location: Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago

Categories: Social Policy

UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.

At UNICEF, we are committed, passionate, and proud of what we do for as long as we are needed. Promoting the rights of every child is not just a job – it is a calling.

UNICEF is a place where careers are built: we offer our staff diverse opportunities for professional and personal development that will help them reinforce a sense of purpose while serving children and communities across the world. We welcome everyone who wants to belong and grow in a diverse and passionate culture, coupled with an attractive compensation and benefits package.

Visit our website to learn more about what we do at UNICEF.

For every child, the right to protection

UNICEF’s Caribbean Multi-Country Office (MCO) serves twelve English- and Dutch-speaking Caribbean countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. As part of UNICEF's Future Focus Initiative, the Caribbean MCO brings together policy influence, technical expertise and strategic partnerships to advance results for children across the region through one integrated programme, one management structure and a shared pool of resources. The Multi-Country Programme 2027-2031 focuses on three shared outcomes: equitable access to primary health care, learning and skills; protection of children from all forms of violence; and child poverty reduction and resilience strengthening.

Children across the Caribbean face interconnected challenges including learning losses, mental health concerns, violence, child poverty and increasing exposure to climate-related disasters. Despite many countries being classified as upper-middle or high income, significant inequalities persist, particularly for vulnerable children, adolescents, indigenous communities and those living in remote areas. Small island developing states also face fiscal constraints and heightened vulnerability to economic and climate shocks, requiring stronger regional cooperation and system-based solutions.

The Caribbean MCO’s management strategy is governed by four principles that together translate the new business model into concrete ways of working:

• Impact-driven: technical expertise is organized in shared multi-country working groups rather than replicated in each country, with enabling functions aligned around UNICEF’s strongest comparative advantages.
• Effective and agile: parallel country ecosystems are replaced by harmonized systems and flexible cross-country staffing, keeping management lean and decisions close to implementation.
• Grounded: regional scale is balanced with national depth through country-specific workplans, Heads of Office in each duty station, and matrix management that anchors authority and accountability at country level.
• People-centered: structural and managerial choices are guided by staff wellbeing, transparency and inclusion, with clear role definitions, meaningful consultation, and continuous investment in learning and development.

The operational expression of this model is the working group model. Rather than replicating similar roles across four separate country offices, technical and operational expertise is organized into 16 thematic and functional working groups, each distributed across different duty stations and each serving the full 12-country MCO — not just its host location. Roles are designed around three organizing principles: shared regional service, meaning every specialist contributes to the wider MCO; complementary expertise, meaning team capabilities reinforce each other rather than repeating the same profile in multiple places; and agile presence, meaning the workforce can be rapidly deployed across countries through travel, surge support or remote modalities in line with evolving needs and priorities. This working group model is the foundation of a fundamentally new way of working for UNICEF in the Caribbean: depth replaces duplication, and shared capacity replaces fragmented country-by-country coverage.

How can you make a difference?

The Multi-Country Programme prioritizes strengthening inclusive and shock-responsive social protection systems that reduce vulnerability, build resilience, and protect children and households before, during and after crises. Working with Governments and regional institutions, UNICEF will leverage strategic partnerships with UN entities, including the International Labour Organization, WFP and UNDP; international financial institutions, including the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Caribbean Development Bank; and bilateral donors and other development partners investing in social protection, disaster risk reduction and climate resilience across the Caribbean.

To strengthen shock-responsive social protection across the Caribbean, the Multi-Country Office is establishing two complementary Social Policy Specialist (Shock-Responsive Social Protection) positions — one based in Barbados and one in Trinidad and Tobago — both contributing substantive technical depth to the MCO's portfolio while ensuring broader geographic coverage across the 12-country platform. The Barbados-based position leverages the country's proximity to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) and its central role in the regional disaster risk management architecture, offering a strategic platform to strengthen linkages between social protection systems and disaster preparedness, response and recovery, with a particular focus on shock responsive social protection design across the OECS sub-region. The Trinidad and Tobago-based position, is embedded in a context of high exposure to economic, climate-related and migration-related vulnerabilities, including cross-border population movements, and benefits from the country's strong regional connectivity and status as a key Caribbean hub to advance inclusive, equitable and shock responsive social protection systems. Together, the two posts ensure comprehensive regional coverage, pairing disaster-risk-focused technical leadership in Barbados with economic and migration- focused engagement in Trinidad and Tobago to build social protection systems that can effectively protect children and families from shocks across the Caribbean.

Under the supervision of the Assistant Representative for Child Poverty Reduction and Resilience Strengthening in Barbados, the incumbent is responsible for providing technical support to the implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of all stages of shock responsive social protection policy and programing, and related advocacy from strategic planning and formulation to delivery of concrete and sustainable results. This includes programmes aimed at improving (a) public policies to reduce child poverty and vulnerability to shocks; (b) coverage, responsiveness and impact of social protection systems on children before, during and after shocks; (c) the transparency, adequacy, equity and efficiency of public investments and financial management for SRSP; and (d) governance, decentralization and accountability measures to increase public participation and the quality, equity, resilience and coverage of social services. This encompasses both direct programme work with government and civil society partners as well as linkages and support to teams working on education, health, child protection, water and sanitation, HIV, climate change, DRR and emergency preparedness and response.

The role will support the development of social protection floors and scalable models such as Cash Plus programmes, while strengthening social registries, beneficiary identification, payment systems, grievance mechanisms and links with essential social services, early warning systems, and disaster risk management frameworks. It will also support the governments in accessing and aligning public, disaster risk, climate adap