Moves ahead to find alternative means of care to prevent institutionalisation of children
Advocacy groups who are working to frame a state mechanism to prevent the institutionalisation of children are advocating a bottoms-up process where government officers working with children and families at community level become proactive partners in the process of deinstitutionalising children.
The need for this kind of approach was stated by the National Advisor- Advocacy, SOS Children’s Villages, Sri Lanka (SOS CVSL), Chathuri Jayasooriya at the DiAC (Deinstitutionalisation and Alternative Care) Conference which was held recently under the patronage of the Parliamentary Caucus on Children and the Parliamentary Oversight Committee on Women and Gender.
Presently over 14,000 children live in over 400 child care institutions according to the statistics of the National Department of Probation and Child Care Services.
An initiative of the Advocacy arm of the SOS CVSL aligned with the theme of ‘Never Give up on a Child’, the conference marked the first step towards framing a state mechanism to prevent the institutionalisation of children and finding alternative means of care. The move is perceived to fill the lacuna of a gatekeeping mechanism to prevent children from entering institutional systems. The event which brought together field officers working with children and families at local level, policy makers, civil society organisations, legal and child care practitioners, academics and several parliamentarians, deliberated on means of strengthening families and thereby preventing the institutionalisation of children.
Apart from the ‘unheard voices’ of the field officers and other community leaders such as mid wives, at the policy-making level, the stakeholders committed to child welfare in the country, acting in isolation, further hamper the deinstitutionalisation process, noted Ms. Jayasooriya further. “It is a case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing,” she added.
The one-day conference also sought to consolidate the lessons learnt through the Local Process Initiative (LPI) launched early this year under the advocacy initiative of the SOS CVSL in collaboration with relevant government authorities. The main objective of the LPI was to bring under the spotlight, the ground realities related to children losing family care which are often not found ground in the national level laws, policies and action plans and to find solutions at the local level. In this process the field-level government officers including health workers such as midwives who are the first points of contact with the vulnerable families and children who are at the risk of losing family care as well as children in care institutions, their caregivers and community members are also consulted. The pilot project covers seven selected Divisional Secretariat locations in six provinces.
The presentation on the findings of the LPI field officers representing the districts of Moneragala, Galle, Anuradhapura, Matara, Nuwaraeliya, Batticaloa and Jaffna underscored the main causes driving children to be institutionalised and tabled the action plans. Extra marital relationships of the parents, domestic violence, loss of parents, sexual abuse of children, children of under-age marriages, substance and alcohol abuse by parents and financial issues were among the chief contributory reasons for the institutionalisation of children as their findings revealed.
While the panel discussion between the field officers and civil society organizations enabled a dialogue on family strengthening and deinstitutionalisation, the session between the policy makers and the field officers sought to underline the challenges before the latter in the deinstitutionalization process. It is learnt that the community level observations and proposals tabled at the conference will be presented to the Parliamentary Caucus on Children, the Parliamentary Oversight Committee on Women and Gender and other relevant authorities including the National Child Protection Authority (NCPA), Department of Probation and Child Care Services as well as media in formulating a state mechanism to prevent the institutionalisation of children and finding alternative means of care.
A 2013 study by the National Institute of Social Development revealed that 82% of such children had at least one living parent. While the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) outlines the global standards for the care and protection of children, which we have ratified, the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children further assist in legislating and implementing the UNCRC. Many positive global moves on deinstitutionalisation are presently taking place, among which the recent successful cases of Indonesia, Chile Moldova and Malawai, are significant.