Thousands of children are spending their childhood in residential institutions. Institutions that provide residential care to children exist in all sizes with the strength of the children ranging from 50-100, to sometimes as high as 5000 in a single institution. In the southern states alone there are thousands of residential institutions managed by both government and non-government organisations and individuals. A number of residential institutions are also mushrooming each day; since many of these are neither registered nor even authorised, the exact number of children in their care is extremely difficult to determine.
Simultaneous to the rise in the number of institutions there has also been an increasing movement of children towards residential care. A frequently cited reason for institutionalising children is lack of access to quality schools in many rural and semi-rural areas. Parents, unwilling to risk the poor education that is nearer to them, enrol their children in institutions much farther away, typically residential institutions.
Other factors also contribute to institutionalised childhood - socio-economic strife, brought about by the breakdown of livelihood options in rural areas, migration to the cities in search of livelihood, family circumstances like abuse, abandonment etc. Not only do various situations lead to institutionalisation of children, research also shows that placing a child in an institution is often the first choice in situations of social, economic and emotional crisis, due to the belief that these children will be offered a better life in residential care. This may not be necessarily true, but is nonetheless an additional reason why children may find themselves in residential homes rather than their own.
There is a definite need to work to change this mindset, along with the need to explore, examine and encourage alternatives that will enable a family or family-like environment in the long term interest of the child. Child development experts have been continually expressing concerns about the effects of long term institutional care on children. The Oliver Twist analogy has been drawn time and again to emphasise the adverse impact of the impersonal care and insulated environment that typifies most residential institutions.
Against this background, Child Rights and You floated the Quality Institutional Care and Alternatives for Children [QICAC], a national initiative to bring together as many development organisations, individuals, policy makers and state departments whose views, experiences and expertise would be channelised towards ensuring that the rights of children are safeguarded and their best interests are always at the forefront. The initiative embraces the following guiding principles:
- Every child has the right to a family - biological or otherwise.
- Where this is not possible, institutional care will be the last resort.
- All children in institutions have the right to certain acceptable standards of care.
- The state is primarily responsible for ensuring all of the above.
Promoted as a collective think- and action-tank for these objectives, the QICAC has been evolving over the past five years. In the South, the initiative was first initiated in Karnataka in the 1999, and thereafter in Tamilnadu in 2002 and more recently in Andhra Pradesh in 2004. Seeking to make an impact in the government and non-government system of residential child care, the QICAC in all the three states has managed to garner the participation of close to 100 NGOs and has spread awareness of and support for its guiding principles across the length and breadth of the region.
The Orphanages and Charitable Homes Act, the umbrella legislation for residential care institutions, has come under a lot of scrutiny in the states of TN and Karnataka following the QICAC initiative. The long dormant monitoring mechanism provided for in the Act has been revived, and a Board of Control instituted with the combined pressure and lobby of the different stakeholders in the states. The Board would not only grant licences but also monitor the functioning of the homes and institutions under its purview. The challenge for the future lies in ensuring that these are not just piece-meal responses by the states, and are instead progressive, sustainable actions.
The Childrens' Homes that form a part of the Juvenile Justice System have also been a focus group for the QICAC. One of its thrust areas has been to work with the staff of these Homes and build capacity as well as skills in creating a healthy environment for the children and their care. Alternatives to institutionalisation are also being considered, and once these are understood better, QICAC will work to promote these.
In the aftermath of the tsunami, the significance and the dire need for community-based options to rehabilitate children (orphans/semi-orphans) was sorely felt. Upon reviewing the situation at the ground level in the affected areas of Tamilnadu and Andhra Pradesh, it was noticed that the state viewed the institutionalization of children as the first option, and often the only one. There were blind directives to District administrations to increase admissions to the orphanages. Such directives to these administrations, which were ill-equipped to understand or assess the needs of the affected children and their families, led to a random increase in the numbers in the orphanages - even of children with parents. Families were actually being encouraged to give up their children for adoption!
The reality, however, is very different from the state's perceptions. Extended families and communities do not want to give up their children, and children themselves do not want to stay in residential institutions, and prefer to remain in their communities. The state, however, was terribly insensitive to this, to the extent that some communities even hid their children to prevent forced institutionalisation by the government.
The QICAC's focus in the tsunami-affected areas has been to ensure support and to enable sustainability of the community initiatives established to protect and care for the children. The QICAC has also pushed for the involvement of local panchayats, who know and understand their communities and children best. Similarly, local communities are also sought to be involved in evaluating the institutions set up in their areas. The long-term plan is to ensure that all institutions are linked with the panchayats and other community groups, thus improving their functioning and facilitating monitoring as well.
In Karnataka, the QICAC concept has been carried in a concentrated manner to all the members of the Child Welfare Committees across the state since it is through them that vital decisions about institutionalisation and restoration to the families are made with respect to hundreds of children every month.
In the coming years, the focus of the QICAC will be to bring into its ambit all residential care institutions in the three states, give special attention to the needs and expected standards in institutions for the differently-abled, work with NGOs and the state to examine the different avenues that will keep children in their rightful place with caring families and ensure that the state will remain accountable for the quality of its institutions and the relevance of its policies and laws. Above all the QICAC will be an initiative of the communities, addressing child rights issues and mobilising them to take active part in the care and protection of their children.
