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Excerpt from the
Annual Report 2003 (Topic Future Plans)
We want to
reiterate that no child support is complete unless a
comprehensive plan is considered to cover the family
as well. To this endeavor the following long-term
plan is being considered keeping in mind the
unbreakable link between a child and its family.
We believe that for
each problem we should ensure to provide two types
of services - preventive and supportive service.
Neither of them is complete without the other.
We profess that it
is the most basic requirement to provide prevention
from destitution, and therefore the services must be
planned to assist towards achieving this objective.
Our services must work towards the following:
- Counseling of
single mothers in the areas of psychological and
emotional support, along with morale support.
- Counseling of
families where destitution may be linked with
financial situation.
- Counseling of
families where destitution is caused due to the
sex of the child (primarily related to a female
child) or the number of children
- Temporary
support to help women or families in distress
which could prevent destitution of their child.
- Long term
support through education plan through hostels
etc. for their child or children and through
sponsorship.
- Vocational and
occupational training for self dependency of
single or destitute women, which would in turn
prevent destitution.
Preventive care
must also be extended for the needs of children as
follows:
- Counseling at
adolescence age to children in hostels/schools
- Counseling to
children on the streets or in slum areas through
contact points and group support with regard to
sexual behaviors
- Counseling of
children with regard to career and future goals
Yet prevention also
needs supportive care; and as there are no 100% in
the psychology of the human mind, therefore we must
also have the post preventive or Supportive Services
available. Supportive services means to provide
immediate and long-term care for a situation where
prevention of destitution may be unavoidable.
Supportive care also works with the needs of run
away and missing children providing them a stable
and secure environment while working towards
locating their family.
Some of the first
point services that we would like to cover under
supportive care are:
1. Shelter for
advanced stage single mothers and providing
them:
- Emotional and
psychological support
- Secure and
comfortable environment
- Health and
medical support
- Vocational or
occupational training to aid in self dependency
- Counseling of
the immediate family
- Post delivery
care and counseling
2. Slum or contact
points and group support for run away
or missing children
and provide counseling and high
priority support
for children who need or can be
Counseled to go
back to their families. This will cover:
- Immediate
intervention with the police and the Missing
persons department
- Immediate
intervention with the Child Welfare committee of
the Juvenile court
- Personal
counseling towards locating the family
- Visits to the
areas indicated by the child
- Public
announcements via the Television, Radio and
Newspapers
- Constant
psychological and emotional support
- Secure and
comfortable living environment for as long as
the child is in our care.
3. A home for
destitute children
- This Home has
always provided a stable, secure and comfortable
care for children
- It provides good
quality medical support with advanced
hospitalization care
- Psychological
and emotional counseling of older children
- Education and
Vocational development of older children
4. Long term
alternatives for children:
- Adoption - It is
the safest and most secure method of providing a
child with the best developmental surrounding
with a family who will provide the same love
and affection, besides all the materialistic
needs for a holistic development. Keeping in
mind that this is the best alternative for a
totally destitute child, the program works
towards ensuring that a child does not
unnecessarily grow up in an institution, and is
provided such post supportive care at the
earliest possibility.
- In country
adoption with the needs of finding a family
for a child, it is just as important to find the
most conducive surroundings for his or her
development. This relates directly to the social
surroundings of the child. It is therefore of
primary focus to find a suitable home for the
child with families within the same ethnic or
national background of the same.
ii. Inter-country
adoption At the same time it may not be
Possible for
finding a suitable family for a child, and yet
considering the
placeability of the child, the option of finding
a family outside
the country, yet firstly within the same ethnic
background and then
going onto finding a family of a diverse
ethnicity, must not
be ruled out. Eventually the goal remains
to ensure that
the child has a family. Such adoptions may
also include
"Special Needs" Adoptions, where we work
towards placing
children with extra medical needs, age
concerns or more
difficult to place children.
- Foster care
program it must also be considered that a
few of these children may not finally find a
home, and to deal with this reality it is
important to take into consideration the
prospects of finding a foster family, whereby
the child would be provided with the same love
and affection of a family, but its legal
implications would be different from adoption.
- Hostel
facilities Children from broken families or
from single parents, can be counseled to
continue supporting their child, while finding a
suitable option for placing the child in an
educational hostel / school, where the child
would receive sponsored education. The
responsibility of the parent will continue, as
they would need to keep in constant touch with
the institution, visit the child almost weekly,
and make provisions to take the child home on
holidays and longer vacations.
- Institutional
care this option remains a last option but
cannot be overlooked as well. There are some
children who may never find families, due to age
or severe medical conditions. The option of
foster care may also not be feasible. It is
therefore a reality that such children will
continue to need long term care, and with it, we
must try to provide:
- Long term child
care plans for the childs development
- Continuing
emotional and psychological support
- Develop
mentorship for the child so that the child has
someone to look up to.
- Provide
educational and extra curricular support for
mental and physical development
- For severe
non-treatable medical issues like Cerebral
Palsy, specialized care through medical and non
medical staff is provided.
- Continuous
training to develop and maintain the skills of
the staff working with such children
- Professional
Social Workers support must always be
available.
5. Post adoptive
counseling for adoptees
Over the years,
children who have been adopted from the organization
have shared their need to visit their
"Home" where they spend their first
days/years of their lives, see their cultural
background or study more about their biological
background. Whatever be the need, we must be able to
provide such children with adequate support so as to
enable them with the answers to their queries and
support them towards strengthening their lives.
6. Vocational
Training
In the overall
services, supportive needs would remain incomplete
if we were not to consider providing tools to help
our children and women learn and develop themselves
to be self-dependent. |
