Let's Go Home - A family for every child in India

It is estimated that India has the third largest number of children living in institutions or residential care. Official figures state that more than 9,500 childcare institutions (CCIs) house more than 3,50,000 Indian children – however, 80-90% of these children have at least one living parent. Furthermore, India is estimated to have nearly 35M children in need of care and protection. There are several drivers that put these children at-risk and accelerate their separation from families into more vulnerable situations such as illegal labor and abuse, or into institutions. The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated these risks.

Emerging evidence from the ground suggests that as a consequence of institutionalization, young people leaving institutions in India are one of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in society. Children, once in institutions, are very likely to spend their entire childhoods in institutional care and when they become adults, they lack skills and support they need to become independent, thereby becoming a part of the vicious inter-generational cycle of vulnerabilities.

When children miss out on the opportunity to exercise their right to family-based care, they pay the price in lost potential, and so do we, as a nation – perpetuating cycles of poverty and disadvantage that can span generations. The converse is also true. Reform and investment in family-based care for children will deliver multiple dividends to children themselves, families, communities, and future generations. There is an urgent need to invest in ensuring that children continue to thrive in families securing their own future and that of our society.

It is important to note the decades-long contribution of civil society organizations in India – undertaking several critical interventions towards building capacity, informing policy and program through research and theory building, enhancing child protection service delivery through demonstration of good practice including improving quality of care within institutions, to ensure better life outcomes for children. The enactment of the Juvenile Justice Act 2000 emphasizes the need for family support and strengthening and a shift away from institutional care. Therefore, government and civil society parlance and programming have seen an addition of preventive interventions towards ensuring the safety and protection of all children, presenting an opportunity to revamp and envision an integrated and comprehensive child protection system.

Priorities for Action

Over the past decade, Indian NGOs have spearheaded innovative and impactful strategies to build a more child-centric ecosystem. Engagements with sector leaders, experts and detailed secondary research all point towards five priority areas of action and investment that have the potential to catalyze the mission of every child thriving in a family-based environment:

1. Support families and existing community-based safety nets to create, monitor and sustain an enabling environment for every child’s well-being and development. Families in vulnerable situations must be supported more meaningfully in multiple ways, especially in a post pandemic world, to create a safe, enabling and thriving environment for their children within their homes and communities.
2. Equip nodal points within the child protection system with the knowledge, narratives, networks, tools and resources to understand individual contexts and needs, and strengthen gatekeeping across the child protection system ensuring that institutionalization is deployed as the last resort.
3. Establish culturally relevant, local models of family-based care to strengthen and augment family-based care approaches such as kinship care, foster care and sponsorship programs as an alternative to institutionalization. Several government and non-profit pilots and studies are underway; there is a need to document, test feasibility and draw collective learnings so as to strengthen and mainstream culturally relevant family-based alternative care.
4. Strengthen aftercare support to care leavers to ensure meaningful mainstreaming within society – There is a need to emphasize the need for extended support this cohort requires, enhance programming and budgets, and drive efforts to connect them to the social security net. Most importantly, more data and knowledge of the journeys and life outcomes of care leavers can inform future investment and programming.
5. Build and collectivize the ecosystem surrounding the child to foster an inclusive and supportive environment to ensure positive life outcomes for children. Investing in data and evidence generation, narrative change towards preventable strategies, documentation, dissemination and amplification of on ground practices of good on-ground practices and engaging more funding through collective action will be key in shifting the focus from a largely curative approach to a preventive one.

An Unfinished Agenda 

The Indian Constitution guarantees rights to children as equal citizens at par with adults. Safeguarding these rights, especially their right to family, is not just the mandate of child-protection functionaries. Governments, multilateral organizations, funders, NGOs and community-based organizations in India must do more, and do more urgently and collectively, to make the vision of a family for every child in India, a reality.