THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: For quite long, abandoned and orphaned children have been handed over to individuals, families or organisations for temporary care in the most irresponsible and non-transparent manner, without checking whether the recipients are ‘fit’ to care for the child.
As part of measures to streamline child welfare, the Social Justice Department has come out with the first-ever guidelines for the selection of the “fit person” to whom a child can be handed over for temporary care.
Adoption is the only non-institutional or 'outside welfare home' care mechanism that is governed by strict and clear guidelines.
But temporary, non-institutional mechanisms like individual care or foster care, because it lacks a proper protocol, are open to exploitation by unscrupulous elements.
The rules framed for Integrated Child Protection Scheme, though it has innumerable mentions, do not define the “fit person”. Temporary care is an interim arrangement before a child is adopted.
There have been a lot many instances where children handed over to individuals or institutions for temporary care by the district Child Welfare Committees had gone missing from the supposed “fit persons”.
The new guidelines (see box) state that temporary care of a child should be granted only for six months. Further, it clearly defines a ‘fit person’ in order of priority.
And once the child is given out for temporary care, the social worker or outreach worker should visit the family within the first week.
From then on, for the next two months, the worker should visit the home at least once in two weeks. And then for the next three months, at least once in a month.
