Thiruvananthapuram: It is not as if orphans and destitutes lodged in government-run welfare homes, and even teenagers implicated in serious crimes, are not being provided counsellors. They are, but counselling services in children’s, special and observation homes are more ornamental than useful. There are no child-friendly counseling rooms in most of these welfare homes. Worse, there are not many experienced counsellors either. “If at all a child is counselled, it is done in a crowded ambience where it is virtually impossible for a child to open up,” a top social justice department official said.
In an effort to radically transform the way a welfare institution functions, the social justice department has directed welfare home superintendents to arrange a special counselling room in their homes. “It should have enough privacy and should be child-friendly with toilets and necessary infrastructure like chairs, fans and lighting,” the official said. The primary concern, the official said, is to draw the child out of her self-imposed isolation. “What our homes usually do is to keep its inmates shut in dim bleak rooms, which only exacerbates a child’s already insufferable loneliness,” the official said.
It has also been decided to hire qualified counsellors, psychologists and psychatirsts with at least a decade of experience. There will be no limits on salaries either. Their brief: Emotionally empower a child and function as their mentors. “Unrest in most of our child care institutions is a symptom that our welfare system is malfunctioning,” a top social justice department official said. “We have now come to the realization that it is not enough to construct welfare homes for the orphaned and the traumatized but there should also be expert mechanisms to address the trauma,” the official said.
Under the existing system, Master of Social Service graduates or MA Psychology graduates fresh out of college are being employed on a temporary basis at minimum wages. Not surprisingly, poor salary has in fact has caused counsellors to shun the state welfare homes.
