International Child Advisory Board -
Terms of Reference and Call for Membership
Unity in Care: Advancing Mental Health Support Systems
for Vulnerable Children and Youth
The “Unity in Care: Advancing Mental Health Support Systems for Vulnerable Children and Youth” is a project co-funded by the CERV CHILD Programme of the European Union. This 24-month project is being implemented in the period of January 2025 - December 2026 and is being coordinated by Tdh Hungary. The project is being implemented in partnership with Nisma ARSIS, Tdh Greece, Tdh Kosovo, Tdh Romania.
The main objective of the project is to support key stakeholders (national health, social welfare and education systems, professionals, NGOs, CBOs, etc.) working with and for vulnerable children, youths, and their caregivers in Albania, Kosovo, Greece, and Romania to better respond to the MHPSS needs by promoting evidence-based structured and semi-structured MHPSS (mental health psycho-social support) interventions.
In line with the international and national legal and normative requirements, including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child, the project adopts a child-rights based approach, whereby different areas of children’s rights are considered interrelated and indivisible. As such, the project will operationalize children’s rights to participation as a goal, as a principle and as a means. The international and national Child Advisory Boards (CABs) envisaged by the project are one of the key mechanisms for supporting actualization of children’s rights to participation.
The specific objectives of the Unity in Care project are to:
1. Increase the capacity of MH and non-MHPSS professionals to provide mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) to vulnerable children, youth, and their caregivers.
2. Improve the resilience and psychosocial well-being of vulnerable children, youth, and their caregivers in Albania, Kosovo, Greece, Romania.
3. Provide rights-based opportunities for children and youth to participate in decision-making processes affecting their well-being at local, national, and international levels.
4. Increase the awareness, sharing of best practices, and learning opportunities on preventative measures of both MH and non-MH professionals working with vulnerable children, youth, and their caregivers.
5. Support child and youth-led advocacy for a public health approach to mental health to enhance the access of vulnerable children, youth, and their caregivers to appropriate MHPSS services.
Aims of the International Child Advisory Board
As part of the Project’s Governance structure, an international Child[1] Advisory Board (CAB), comprised of a total of 12 children, is established and supported throughout the project implementation. The main aim of the CAB is to ensure that children’s voices inform decision-making processes throughout the project implementation. Specifically, it entails:
Participate in capacity strengthening activities and stay abreast with the progress of the project;
Advise, provide feedback and suggestions to the project partners on the processes and outputs of contextualizing the methodologies used by the project as to their child-friendliness and suitability for children;
Provide child-lens expertise to the project partners on the quality and child-friendliness of information dissemination processes and materials;
Participate in monitoring and evaluation activities and exercises to gather feedback on the project and offer child-lens expertise as to the further improvements;
Support the establishment of national CABs in their respective countries and contribute to their facilitation, based on children’s willingness. Support collaboration and information flows between international and national CABs.
The suggested aims are preliminary and will be fine-tuned following the initial meeting with child advisors ensuring that their voices are reflected in here.
Membership of the International Child Advisory Board
Within the framework of Unity in Care project, the CAB is composed of 16[2] children (4 from each implementing country) who:
Are between 12-16 years of age
Live in one of the implementing countries (Albania, Kosovo, Greece, Romania), so that they can relate to the lived realities of local children
Willing and motivated to participate in the project activities, contribute to the wellbeing of local children, and enthusiastic about learning new experiences
Include various experiences that children have, for example children from vulnerable backgrounds or hard-to-reach areas, children having less favourable opportunities, children facing structural inequalities etc.
Include various profiles, for example, children from ethnic or minority communities, children with different abilities
While having basic communication skills in English is recommended to interact with CAB facilitators and among child advisors, this should not by any means present an exclusion criteria for children from different backgrounds. In such cases, partners should put the necessary supports in place to support children’s interactions, i.e. peer support, accompaniment by a supportive adult.
Children’s participation is voluntary, and they can withdraw at any moment they deem necessary. The CABs representation is inclusive, diverse, age and gender-balanced.
The principles of non-discrimination and Do No Harm are respected at all the stages of establishing, supporting and developing CABs.
Ethical considerations
In establishing, supporting and developing the CAB and facilitating CAB meetings, project partners should refer to and abide by their organisational Child Safeguarding policies and procedures. The Child Safeguarding Policies and their procedures apply to all operations and activities conducted by, or on behalf, of the project.
Project partners must assess the risk of every individual child involved in the CAB, to see whether their participation is safe and that they can give informed consent/informed assent to not only take part in the project but also consent to data collection elements of the project. Parental consent to their children’s participation in the CAB is required.
Meetings of CABs
The CAB members will be invited to participate in and meaningfully contribute to CAB meetings and related activities and initiatives throughout the project implementation, as listed in the Aims of CABs section of this document. The CAB meetings are to be planned according to the progress of the project [e.g. timelines for co-producing/validating materials, key milestones and deliverables].
The CAB meetings will take place online and will be facilitated by Tdh Hungary. Throughout the project implementation, a total of 8 CAB meetings will be prepared, facilitated, and documented through collecting attendance lists and meeting records.
So, if you are 12-16 years old and want to contribute to making a difference for children in your community and in Europe, together with other children, this opportunity is for you!. We invite you to become a member by filling out this application form by March 7, 2025: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=hThqdQqUZ0SuiQJJpUpBpZLdMo9G3r1EkeVlew9Fuq1URDlaOU1EVjVFM1VSMkxDTEdRRlZXVEpPNS4u
Important information on data protection: The data collected through this form will only be used for the purposes of selecting members of the International Children's Advisory Board. They will be stored for a period of one month from the closing date of applications and will then be securely deleted in accordance with personal data protection regulations.
