Consultant for ICSP Lebanon Learning Initiative on Adaptive Protection Programming and Service Linkages

Consultant for ICSP Lebanon Learning Initiative on Adaptive Protection Programming and Service Linkages

Trócaire is an international NGO working with local partners in the world's most at-risk communities and with people in Ireland to tackle the underlying causes of poverty and injustice and respond to the crises they create. Together we bring about positive and lasting change for a just world. Trócaire works in up to 20 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. We work towards five goals: Promote Access to Justice; Achieve Climate & Environmental Justice; Ensure Women & Girls' Protection, Voice & Influence; Save Lives and Protect Human Dignity; and Mobilise the Public on the island of Ireland to achieve Global Justice. Find out more about the organisation at www.Trócaire.org.

Trócaire works through national and local partners in Lebanon and Syria delivering an integrated humanitarian & development programme that includes the provision of basic assistance, food security, livelihood, and protection assistance and strengthening social cohesion within conflict affected and displaced communities. As a partnership agency, Trócaire works with a portfolio of national and local partner organisations to strengthen their capacities to deliver humanitarian assistance and implement development-oriented programmes in a way that ensures compliance with international standards.

1. Background

Trócaire received funding from Irish Aid under the five-year Ireland Civil Society Partnership (ICSP - [Click the Apply button below to apply, and Create my CV to build a CV tailored to this offer, professionally] ) funding scheme to implement a programme in Lebanon. The programme responds to a complex and rapidly changing context through local partners and includes protection, specialised services, cash assistance, livelihoods, and other forms of support for vulnerable communities. Across the ICSP period, protection programming has had to respond to changing needs, repeated shocks, conflict, displacement, economic pressure, and shifts in the operating environment. At the same time, Trócaire and its partners have worked to strengthen disability inclusion, age and gender responsiveness, accountability to affected populations, protection mainstreaming, referral pathways and links between protection, cash and other relevant interventions.

Experience

As Trócaire prepares for the final year of the current five-year ICSP cycle and the next programme development cycle, there is an opportunity to bring together the learning generated since 2023 and use it to inform future protection programming. Trócaire therefore intends to commission a learning initiative focused on how protection programming can remain adaptive, safe and relevant, how existing formal and informal linkages with other forms of assistance and specialised services have worked in practice, and what these experiences imply for more intentional integration in future programming.

2. Purpose of the consultancy

The purpose of this consultancy is to document, analyse and synthesise practical learning from ICSP Lebanon since 2023, with a primary focus on women and girls' protection and GBV programming. The learning will focus on two main areas: (1) how protection programming has adapted to changing needs, shocks and operating conditions; and (2) how protection pathways and linkages with other relevant services have worked in practice, including through formal or informal referrals, coordination and sequencing. Disability inclusion will be examined as a key cross-cutting learning strand, drawing on the experience of the three-year disability inclusion initiative. The exercise will explore what these experiences suggest for future programme design, including where more intentional service linkages may add value and where specialised or standalone approaches remain more appropriate. It will not assume that ICSP Lebanon currently operates an embedded integration model or that greater integration is always desirable.

This is a learning and improvement exercise and should not be treated as a programme evaluation. It is not expected to measure impact, attribute outcomes to ICSP, score partner performance, or assess the effectiveness or merit of the programme as a whole against evaluation criteria. The learning focus is to understand and explore how programming adapted, how linkages and referral pathways operate in practice, what approaches and practices appear useful, where important gaps or constraints remain, and what should inform future design. The consultant should build on existing monitoring and evaluation evidence, programme documentation, partner and staff experience, and limited primary qualitative inquiry appropriate to the protection context to identify patterns, practical lessons and actionable learning.

3. Objective

The overall objective of the consultancy is to strengthen Trócaire Lebanon and partners' future protection programming by generating practical learning from ICSP experience since 2023 on adaptation, protection pathways and service linkages, with disability inclusion as a key cross-cutting lens, and translating this learning into concrete implications for the next programme design cycle.

4. Specific objectives

Document how protection programming under ICSP Lebanon has evolved and adapted since 2023 in response to conflict, displacement, social tensions, economic pressures and other changes in needs and operating conditions.

Other information

Understand how protection programming has connected with other relevant ICSP or external services through formal or informal referrals, sequencing, coordination and follow-up, including where cash or basic assistance has been used alongside protection support. Identify practical approaches and learning from the three-year disability inclusion initiative, alongside the application of age, gender, accountability to affected populations and protection mainstreaming across protection programming. Identify the main enabling factors, constraints, risks and gaps affecting adaptive protection programming and coherent referral or service pathways, including partner roles, capacities, service availability, coordination and operational flexibility. Explore, based on actual ICSP Lebanon experience, where more intentional linkages or integration could add value in future programming and where specialised, standalone or protection-led approaches remain more appropriate to safeguard service quality, confidentiality and do-no-harm principles. This is not intended as a formal assessment of integration between ICSP goals. Translate the learning into clear recommendations and practical guidance that can directly inform the next ICSP programme design cycle.

5. Scope of work

The consultancy will focus primarily on women and girls' protection and GBV programming under ICSP Lebanon since 2023, while also capturing learning from the three-year disability inclusion initiative and relevant linkages with other services or interventions. It is not intended to review the full ICSP portfolio or to evaluate integration between programme goals. The main partner experience to be considered will be three local partners, while other internal or external actors may be consulted where they are directly relevant to a protection pathway, referral mechanism, specialised service or cross-cutting issue. The scope may include protection and specialised protection services; formal and informal referral pathways and follow-up; linkages with other relevant ICSP or external services where these directly affect protection pathways or participant experience; disability inclusion; age and gender considerations; accountability to affected populations; and protection mainstreaming. Particular attention should be given to practical implementation questions, including how adaptation decisions were made; how protection risks and vulnerabilities informed programming; how referrals and sequencing worked in practice; how partners coordinated across different types of support; what helped or limited continuity of protection support; how inclusion and other cross-cutting commitments were translated into day-to-day implementation; and what future programme design should do differently. The learning should also consider how protection support was adapted across different delivery settings, including partner or community safe spaces and emergency or shelter settings, and how coordination with local authorities and other service providers influenced access and continuity of support.

Education / Diplomas

The consultancy should not assess individual sensitive cases or seek to determine whether one partner or intervention performed better than another. Where specialised protection or GBV-related services are considered, the analysis should remain at an aggregated, anonymised and systems level. No individual GBV case files, case notes or identifiable case information should be shared with the consultant or with third parties outside service provision for the purpose of this learning exercise.

6. Core learning question

What can we learn from ICSP Lebanon since 2023 about how protection programming has adapted to a changing context and how protection pathways and service linkages have worked in practice, and what should this mean for future programme design? The following sub-questions are intended to guide the exercise and may be refined during inception:

1. Adaptation: How has protection programming adapted since 2023 to changing needs, shocks and operating conditions? What enabled or constrained these adaptations, and what practical lessons emerge?

2. Protection pathways and service linkages: How have formal and informal referrals, coordination, sequencing and other linkages with relevant services worked in practice? What has supported or limited continuity and coherence of support?

3. Disability inclusion and cross-cutting practice: What practical learning emerges from the three-year disability inclusion initiative, and what does ICSP experience show about applying age, gender, accountability to affected populations and protection mainstreaming in practice?

4. Future programme design: What should Trócaire and partners continue, strengthen, adapt or avoid in the next programme cycle? Where could more intentional service linkages add value, under what conditions, and where should specialised or standalone protection approaches remain separate?

7. Methodology

The consultant is expected to propose a robust, feasible, and learning-oriented methodology. The approach should be practical, participatory, and proportionate to the purpose of the assignment. The methodology should combine a desk review of relevant programme and learning documents; review of existing monitoring and evaluation evidence; key informant interviews with Trócaire staff, partners, technical advisors and other relevant internal or external actors; and structured reflection sessions with Trócaire and partners. Limited consultation with selected PSS, disability inclusion or other relevant protection participants may be considered only where useful, ethically appropriate, and agreed during inception. Individuals should not be recruited on the basis of GBV survivor or case-management status. The consultant may also use anonymised case examples, service-pathway examples or pathway mapping based on existing documentation and staff knowledge to understand how support was connected in practice.

For GBV case management and other specialised protection services, the learning may include consultations with case workers and relevant technical staff to understand aggregated programme experience related to referrals, Cash for Protection where relevant, safety planning, follow-up, service adaptations and implementation challenges. These discussions should not involve the disclosure or review of identifiable individual cases.

Primary data collection should be limited and purposeful and used to deepen understanding, triangulate emerging learning and fill important evidence gaps, rather than recreate an endline or impact evaluation. Participant consultations should focus on practical experiences of the programme, including relevance and accessibility of support, referral and follow-up, application of learning such as coping or stress-management approaches, adaptations for different age groups and contexts, and experiences of different delivery settings where relevant. Questions may explore changes participants associate with the support, while avoiding attribution of outcomes or attempts to measure programme impact. Participants should not be asked to disclose individual GBV experiences or case details.

Where feasible, the consultant should seek to include participants from different implementation periods, including previous cohorts, to capture how experiences may have differed over time and across changing contexts. The preferred approach would be to include representation from at least one relevant cohort per year where participants can be safely

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