THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Social Justice Department is developing a management protocol for child welfare homes in the state. The new management mechanism, instead of introducing new techniques, will be a distillation of all the government orders related to social justice and juvenile justice passed over the last two decades and will introduce a logistical and psychological protocol on child management.
“The work on preparing the protocol has already begun,” a top social justice official said. “As it exists now, child management is a messy and complex affair. Employees in children’s homes are either not aware of the new rules and are generally not trained in the modern ways of child management,” he said. The plan is to transform the protocol into a ready reckoner for officials working in the Social Justice Department.
Along with this, the Social Justice Department is also in the process of transforming caretakers in the Children’s Home into psychological counselors. The training has begun in mid 2016. “Managing orphaned and destitute children is in itself challenging. The complexities of dealing with children who had exhibited criminal tendencies are better left unsaid,” the official said. “Any child in a welfare institution feels trapped. The challenge is to give them a sense of home,” the official added.
The need to restructure the management of children’s homes has been mooted long before, triggered mainly by the regular attempts at escape from welfare homes. A reform process is already on. Earlier the practice was to shut children in Observation Homes (where children in conflict with law are to be placed) in a cell resembling in a jail. But now, they are held in a hall where they get maximum possible freedom of movement. The flipside is, it is easy to jump out. But escape attempts had indeed come down, though boys still sneak out. Child rights activists, however, feel that it would be too much to expect the current set of caretakers to mend their ways.
