Special care for juvenile offenders on cards

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: All this while, children below 16 years, who have committed serious crimes, are mostly sent out on bail, and then completely forgotten.

Now, for the first time in the country, a state has decided to go after these children, draw out their problems, meet their families, and provide sustained and comprehensive support not just to the child but also to his family.

Christened ‘Psychosocial Care for Children in Conflict with Law’, the project has the support of NIMHANS, the country’s premier mental health and neuroscience institute.

The project has been rolled out in three districts on a pilot basis; Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode for the sheer number of juvenile crime cases and Palakkad for the presence of a vast marginalised tribal community.

NIMHANS has already imparted training to stakeholders — juvenile police officers, district child protection officers, observation and special home supervisors and caretakers - on ways to deal with disturbed children.

Mainly, on ways to provide what has been termed as “psychosocial first aid” to the child accused of crime. Three NGOs have also been identified for each of the three districts.

The first-line intervention will be carried out by these NGOs. "After providing the initial counselling, they will visit the home of the accused child, his school, talk to concerned people, including parents, teachers, neighbours and friends. In short, they will do a thorough background check, and use all this information to analyse the reasons for the child's behaviour and recommend remedial measures," said Ms Kavitha, a NIMHANS research scholar who is coordinator for the project.

Each child who indulges in a criminal act will be suffering from a unique torment. If one has parental issues, another could suffer from isolation by peers, yet others from learning difficulties.

So the response strategy will be different for each child, and will be detailed in the 'individual child care plan' for each child. The project hopes to give support to parents, too. If for instance the father's drinking and violent ways are the problem, the man will be linked to a de-addiction centre.

The monitoring process will be two-tiered. Once the child care plan is in place, the NGO team will constantly monitor the progress. The functioning of the NGOs, in turn, will be scrutinised by district child probation officers.