A Parliamentary panel has recommended district-level surveys to proactively identify orphaned and abandoned children. A report “Review of Guardianship and Adoption Laws” was recently tabled on in Parliament by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances and Law and Justice.
Key highlights of report
- It is important to get a true picture of number of children who are orphaned/abandoned through a district-level survey and the data needs to be updated on a regular basis.
- A monthly meeting chaired by the District Magistrate should be held in every district to ensure that orphan and abandoned children found begging in streets are produced before the Child Welfare Committee and are made available for adoption at the earliest.
- There were 27,939 prospective parents registered with the Child Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) as on December 2021, up from nearly 18,000 in 2017.
- In comparison, though there were a total 6,996 orphaned, abandoned and surrendered children residing in childcare institutions considered adoptable, only 2,430 were declared “legally free” for adoption by Child Welfare Committees.
- The waiting time for adoption too has increased to three years from one year in the past five years.
- The total number of children adopted in 2021-2022 was only 3,175.
- Experts say the reason there are only 2,430 children found to be legally free for adoption in a country with an estimated 3.1 crore orphans according to the 2020 Orphan Report of IHH Humanitarian and Social Research Center (INSAMER) is because of the failure to bring more children in need of care into the government’s safety net. And that is why they welcome the suggestion for a district-level survey, but call for a need to exercise caution.
- The point should not be to track more children and put them into adoption, but to not leave children out of the safety net. Otherwise poor people will have their children snatched away. We have to provide a family for a child, not vice versa.
- There are 6,525 child care institutions registered under the Juvenile Justice Act as on September 30, 2021, according to the government’s reply in the Lok Sabha.
- But there are only 6,996 identified as adoptable.
- A mapping exercise of childcare institutions by the Women and Child Development Ministry in its report in 2018 found that of the total 3.7 lakh children in need of care and protection in these homes, the largest category of children were those who had a single parent at 32% or 1.2 lakh children, while those without any parent were just 11% or 41,730 out of the total.
- Children in CCIs are there for various reasons such as for shelter or protection or care or for whatever reason their family is not able to look after them.
- These are used by vulnerable families more as hostels or spaces where there is access to education, food, shelter and clothing.
- In order to link children to nurturing families there is a need for a paradigm shift that looks beyond “custodial” needs such as food and shelter and focuses on their rights.
- Many children are under parental care, but not optimal care.
- There are parents abusing their own children or neglecting them.
- There must have a zero tolerance towards abuse, violence, exploitation and neglect of children and then have an adequate safety net so that they get the help they need.
- The failure to do so also leads to malpractices, which is what the centralisation of adoptions in 2015 aimed to curb.
(Source: The Hindu)
