Irregularities at Divine Foundling Home

KOZHIKODE: The specialised adoption agency, Divine Providence Foundling Home (Karuna Bhavan)  at Rajakkad in Idukki,  has  committed financial irregularities. This has been found by two government-designated teams which looked into the adoption-related  lapses. Mr A.S. Ganesh Kumar, programme manager,  State Child Protection Society (SCPS), has found that the home had accepted two government grants in  2013-14 and 2014-15 fiscals.   The double grant was earned by duping the authorities in the name of two institutions, Divine Providence Foundling Home and Divine Providence Trust.

In 2013-14, Rs 30,243 was  received as orphanage grant and  Rs 7,51,788 as ICPS (integrated child protection scheme) grant from the SJ department.  In 2014-15, Rs 57,557 was  received as orphanage grant and Rs 6,12,900 as ICPS grant.  According to CARA (Central Adoption Resource Authority) guidelines, specialised adoption agencies should start a separate bank account for child care corpus and no donation should be accepted for it. But the home had accepted donations for the corpus fund. Again, the home had received registration fee from an adoption couple violating norms.

Other financial lapses were detected in the salary of the maid and in the electricity bill. A girl child was deputed as maid in the home instead of sending her to school. The team which visited the home on September 24  and December 19, 2016 consisted of Mr Kumar, State Adoption Resource Agency (SARA) programme manager Nijo Sebastian and Idukki district child protection officer  V.A. Shamnad. The first team, comprising  DCPO, SARA PM and non-institutional care protection officer at Idukki  had visited the home on April 4, 2016. Their report said  that pictures of children at the home were shown on the website. “This  is in violation of  section 74 (1) of JJ Act which prohibits the exhibition of such children,” the report said.