Program Officer Counselling

JOB DESCRIPTION:
Program Officer-Counselling MCH - Building Bridges (BB) - Bhiwandi

ABOUT SNEHA

A secular, Mumbai-based non-profit organization, SNEHA believes that investing in women's health is essential to

building viable urban communities. SNEHA is 450+ people strong, innovative and progressive organization that

works on health and nutrition in urban slum pockets with women and their families. SNEHA follows the life-cycle

approach to health and nutrition, by intervening at critical junctures (adolescence, preconception, conception,

pregnancy, postnatal, infancy and toddlerhood, family planning) to ensure improved health and nutritional outcomes

for women and children living in some of Mumbai’s most vulnerable and deprived slums and in the Mumbai

Metropolitan Region (MMR) as well.

SNEHA recognizes that, in order to improve urban health standards, our initiatives must target both care seekers and

care providers. We work with communities residing in informal settlements to empower women and communities to

be catalysts of change in their own right and collaborate with existing public health systems and health care providers

to create sustainable improvements in urban health. We have currently 11 programs running across SNEHA which are

Maternal and Child Health (MCH), Public System partnerships (PSP), Empowerment, Health and Sexuality of

Adolescents (EHSAS), Prevention of Violence against Women and Children (PVWC) (e) SNEHA Centre, SNEHA Shakti,

Healthy Cities Project (HCP), Palliative Care, Livelihood Generation, Central Operations, Research and Information

Management.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

Maternal and Child Health (MCH) - Building Bridges, is a focused Direct Community Intervention in 10,000 households

in the three communities of Bhiwandi. The Maternal and Child Health (MNH) program of SNEHA has been working in

Bhiwandi since 2016; directly working with in 10,000 Households (HHs) and indirectly working with the public health

systems of BNMC spanning 12 intervention areas across 3 Health Posts and one state run - Indira Gandhi Memorial

Hospital. The MCH program is committed to improve the health status of women and children in the most vulnerable

urban slum areas. The program has been working with the most vulnerable communities to fill in imbalanced gaps in

accessing health care services between population groups and promote health and well-being. The program reaches

out to married women in the reproductive age (MWRA) between the age of 15 to 49 years, covering women in the

antenatal and postnatal stages, couples for family planning counselling and children in the 0-6 years’ age group for

immunization, home based care of the low birth weight babies, nutrition, early and exclusive breast feeding and early

identification and treatment for infectious disease. The MCH frontline workers conduct home visits to counsel pregnant

women and mothers with infants, on antenatal and postnatal care, caring for new-born and immunization for children.

They also organize community awareness activities like street plays, exhibitions and mass campaigns on topics like

breastfeeding, complementary feeds, immunization and importance of handwashing. They also support the public

health system during immunization camps, surveys for COVID-19, training of volunteers and regular capacity building

of government public health workers, sevikas of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), Accredited Social

Health Activists (ASHAs).

ABOUT THE PROGRAM ON PREVENTION OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

SNEHA’s Program on Prevention of Violence against Women and Children (PVWC) aims to develop high‐impact

strategies for primary prevention, ensure survivors’ access to protection and justice, empower women to claim their

rights, mobilize communities around ‘zero tolerance for violence’, and respond to the needs and rights of excluded and

neglected groups. The Program prioritizes enhanced co-ordination of the state response to crimes against women

through a convergence approach that works with government and public systems to reinforce their roles in assuring

basic social, civil and economic security.

Violence against Women in BB - MCH

Building Bridges - MCH is embarking on a new intervention of addressing violence against women by building an

ecosystem of non-tolerance to violence against women - a socioecological approach with the involvement family and

community members. This intervention will be implemented across the 10,000 households in the three major

intervention areas alongside the Reproductive Maternal and Child Health Integrated model with a focus on

identification of women survivors of violence and conducting prompt and appropriate referrals for services like

counselling, crises intervention, legal aid etc.

This new initiative will work on two major pillars of intervention:
Primary prevention: The primary prevention component will entail community outreach, mass awareness, and