Kerala has done well for social protection of kids and family-based care: Herrero
Kerala has achieved tangible results in not only dein stitutionalisation of chil dren and expansion of family-based care oppor tunities such as foster care but also in prevention of fa mily separation, Soledad Herrero, chief of Child Protection, UNICEF India, has said.
She was talking to The Hindu on the sidelines of a two-day national work shop on 'Deinstitutionali sation and family-based al ternative care' here on Tuesday.The workshop was organised by Women and Child Development depart ment with the support of UNICEF.
Ms. Herrero said the State had formulated a five year action plan for dein stitutionlisation and strengthening of family based care. There were more than 200 children in foster care in the State. "It Loneliness Smith is a very positive number, with a steady increase.
Kerala has also significantly re duced the number of children in institutions from 20,000 prior to the pandemic to 9,000 now."
This was also possible owing to the Supreme Court's guidelines on releasing children from child-care institutions and observation homes, Ms. Herrero said. Nationally, nearly 60% of the children in institutions were re leased, and this indicated that many of these children had families to return to. COVID-19, she said,
brought the opportunity to improve efforts towards the deinstitutionalisation .The State, she said, had really made an effort to identify vulnerable fami lies, as prevention of chil dren from situations that caused them to seek refuge in child protection system was the most cost-effective investment.
Ms. Herrero said the workshop was a platform for States to learn from one another and make recom mendations on the agenda of ensuring that every child lived in a family based care environment."Kerala could do more on the prevention and ga tekeeping aspect. Support ing and gatekeeping me chanisms in convergence with important structures such as child protection committees at the local le vel are important since they will know when a child is at risk. The key thing is to identify the root causes that lead to family separation," she said.
