Kerala asks child welfare committees to top up duties

Thiruvananthapuram: District child welfare committees have generally limited their functions to sending a destitute or sick child or a child in conflict with law to a government-run children’s or observation home. They have now been asked to do more than just a quasi-judicial function. The Social Justice Department has asked these committees to prepare three reports periodically: an assessment of the observation home, a case monitoring sheet for every child and a quarterly report. The observation home is a place where children in conflict with law are lodged. “The purpose of the assessment is to get an understanding of the basic infrastructure, quality of services and functioning of the home,” a top Social Justice Department official said. The assessment has to be filed every six months.

A case monitoring sheet is a growth plan for a child placed in one of the homes. There should be a case sheet for each child in government-run homes. It should have a comprehensive history of the child, his pre-shelter home status, shelter home progress and a post-shelter home analysis. The quarterly report will detail the status of cases and will provide a break-up of the kind of children in each home (runaway, orphaned, abandoned, child labourers, child beggars, street children, physically challenged, mentally challenged, HIV-infected, children of commercial sex workers) and also details of orders passed by the CWC.

“We have children who have been dumped in children’s homes for more than two years because the CWC had forgotten about them,” a social worker said. A CWC member, however, complains that the job is thankless. “We are not even paid our honorariums. What’s more, we are left to fend for ourselves. We do not have a single staff to assist us,” the member said. There is a CWC in each of the 14 districts and it consists of a chairperson and four other members.