Dealing with External Environment As movement was restricted during lockdown the concern for child care institutions surfaced in all circles. The apex child rights body in India, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), had asked states to sensitize children housed at child care institutions about the importance of social distancing and staying indoors to protect themselves from coronavirus. The NCPCR had directed district child protection units to ensure that donors would not be allowed to go inside the premises of a CCI and a separate counter may be placed near the entrance of the home, where donations can be accepted. “The donors may be requested to provide dry ration/uncooked food material instead of cooked meals,” the NCPCR said. Also, The NCPCR had urged states to release pending funds to CCIs at the earliest. (Source: Business Standard, 30 March 2020). ‘ Later, in early September, there was another notification from the NCPCR, directing district magistrates and collectors of eight states- Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Mizoram, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra and Meghalaya to ensure that all children living in CCIs return to their families, preferably within a 100-day period. Those who could not be sent back to their families would be considered for adoption or placed in foster homes, it added. The eight states have 1.84 lakh (or nearly 72 per cent) children in CCIs out of a total of 2.56 lakh in the country and the decision was taken while keeping in view the alarming concerns over the safety and security of children residing in these institutions as well. The court is suo moto monitoring the condition and welfare of children placed in care homes across the country during the pandemic. However, the court wondered whether the NCPCR could issue such general directions to the States without considering the education, health, safety of the children, the consent of their parents and their economic situation. Amicus curiae Gaurav Agrawal said the NCPCR direction violated the Juvenile Justice Act of 2015. Besides, he argued that the pandemic would make a child more vulnerable to domestic abuse. His note in the Supreme Court mentions the NCPCR letter to Karnataka in this regard. A Bench led by Justice L. Nageswara Rao asked the NCPCR to respond why such repatriation of the children to their families should not be done on an individual basis. (Source: Indian Express, 26 Sept. 2020) Initially in Hyderabad, there was no pressure from the concerned department to vacate the schools, however the number of children in the homes and number of children who had returned to their families because of this crisis had been communicated to the Child Welfare Committee (CWC). Later in Anantapur, the line departments had teleconferences with all NGOs in which officials instructed teams to send children to their families provided the families were willing to take them back. The state team negotiated with CWC citing the family situations of 25 children and mentioned that parents were not ready to receive the children. After checking with few parents, they permitted the home teams to allow the children to remain. Even in Hyderabad city, the District Collector’s office asked home teams to collect details of children and the contact numbers of their parents in a prescribed format. A few of the parents received calls from the DC’s office. The officials were checking to see whether these children wanted to be in the homes or whether they had been forced to keep these children in these CCIs. They also wanted to know whether parents were capable of taking care of them or wanted to send the children back to RHP CCIs or other NGO-run CCIs. The CRDS home which had 25 children at that time right had been instructed by the CWC to send all children back to their families as their parents were all single parents. But the parents were not ready to take the children back. The phone numbers of these parents were given to the WCD, so as to verify whether or not parents were
Coping with Covid-19
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