A migrant worker with children headed back home pauses for break on day 5 of the nationwide lockdown to check the spread of coronavirus. (Sunil Ghosh/HT Photo )

The Centre has advised childcare institutions to send back home children in conflict with the law in view of the coronavirus crisis.

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, in an advisory dated March 28 said that this directive was in line with a Supreme Court order (writ petition (c) No 1/2020) asking all states to release prisoners on parole or interim bail to reduce overcrowding in jails, and said that a high-powered committee will be formed to implement this.

The NCPCR asked state governments to prepare a list of such children in observation and special homes so that they can be released.

In its advisory, the NCPCR has also asked states to take care of children of migrant workers making their way home.

“Some children may be moving with their families or alone or in group of migrant laborers from other States. In the best interest of the child, such families/children should remain in the same place where they are. In case of families, adequate measures may be taken as deemed appropriate by the competent authority,” the NCPCR said in its advisory.

In addition to that, faced with the constraints of the 21-day lockdown, officials involved with children in institutional care have issued special guidelines to states to deal with the Covid-19 crisis. At the forefront of these efforts are ChildLine as well as the NCPCR.

In an advisory to states on March 23, the ministry of women and child development said that the Centre’s round the clock hotline for children in distress, ChildLine will function as the emergency response and support for children. It directed states to exempt ChildLine from lockdown norms, and asked ChildLine to ensure that its partner organisations and call centres remain functional.

Another ChildLine official said that given the dire need of children of migrant labourers making their way back to their hometowns, the staff has been involved in providing children and their families food as well.

Experts in the field, however, wondered if sending a child back home is advisable, especially in the case of children in need of protection and care. In Trichy, 2,757 children among the total 4,803 children in institutional care from 72 institutions were sent home after the breakout of the Covid-19 crisis. In Haryana, the chairman of the Juvenile Justice Monitoring Committee has asked children in conflict with law to be released.

Bharati Ali of HAQ Centre for Child Rights said that if states are sending as many as 60% of children home, it defeats the purpose of a care home.

In the lack of a reference point for how many children are in institutional care, the WCD had started an exercise to map 9,589 homes, including observation homes, special homes and open shelters across the country.

The ‘Mapping and Review Exercise of Child Care Institutions’, conducted between December 2015 -March 2017, released last year, said that in India, 3,77,649 children were found to be under institutional care across the country. These included 7422 children in conflict with law and 3,70,227 children in need of care and protection.

The study also said that 53.6% homes did not have an adequate number of caregivers per child and only 28.7% homes had adequate food.

Preeti Patkar who runs a child care institution in Maharashtra’s Raigarh said that an uniform policy for all children could do more help than harm. “Some children need to be away from home for their own protection and might be headed home. In other cases, children who were going to be restored will now be stuck due to the lockdown,” she said.