National Partnership Meet 2007 (Directors)

The 9 th National Partnership Meet (Directors) was organized in Delhi from 9 th to 11 th October 2007 at Jamia Hamdard, Delhi . The meet was attended by 132 Directors of CHILDLINE partner organization across India . Ms. Chitra Acharya, CIF welcomed the gathering.

Dr. Loveleen Kacker, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Women and Child Development spoke on the proposed Integrated Child Protection Scheme, the most comprehensive legislation in the world and for the very first time it talks about the protection of child rights" and "best interest of the child. In her presentation she discussed about -

The existing programmes, policies, budgetary allocations and the gaps in the system.

• The need, objective, guiding principle and approach of ICPS.
• Structure and Operational mechanism of ICPS at all levels.
• Budgetary allocation for Child Protection that has remained static at .03
• Child Budgeting concept that would include only those schemes that would directly benefit children.

To make the ICPS a successful model, she stressed on the Government - Civil Society Partnership. Following the presentation on ICPS, Ms. Kajol Menon, Executive Director, CHILDLINE India Foundation (CIF), made a presentation on the overview of CIF's activities since the last Partnership Meet, held in June 06.

In the post lunch session the directors shared the Best Practices in four main areas, that is:

• City Advisory Board (CAB) & Advocacy initiatives
• Child Participation
• Outreach Strategies
• NICP
• Innovations

Following this Ms Shantha Sinha, Chairperson of National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), shared about main four areas of intervention of the Commission -

• Creating awareness that the fact that 'children matter'
• Efforts towards impacting policies and legal mechanisms
• Monitoring of protection of children's rights
• Research on issues related to children

Day 2

The sessions focused on the three major issues of concern as identified by the CHILDLINE network during the year. Presentations were made on the issues and were followed by interactive sessions with the audience, as follow:

Child Trafficking: Mr. Sandeep. Kumar Mitra, Head - RRC, East Zone made a presentation on Child Trafficking. This was followed by sharing of CHILDLINE experiences in interventions in the issue of child trafficking, by Fr Jibi Jose, CHILDLINE Gorakhpur and Mr Milind Kulkarni, Ahmednagar

Child Labour: Dr. Komal Ganotra, Head - RRC, North Zone This was followed by sharing of CHILDLINE experiences in the interventions in the issue of child labour by Ms Sheila Devaraj, CHILDLINE Bangalore

Missing Children: Ms. Nishath Basheer, Head - RRC, South Zone made a presentation on the issue

Post these presentations, the participants discussed in group on the following:

• Existing mechanisms of the state and the NGOs, Networking & advocacy approaches used by CHILDLINE, Recommended Stands and Implementation approaches,
• Challenges ahead to intervention in the issue

Presentations on all three issues were made in the plenary session followed by interactive sessions.

The day concluded with a session on alternate reporting on CRC by Ms Razia Ismail, India Alliance for Child Rights, Delhi . She shared about the CRC reporting and its importance, akin to an audit report for the GOI, which will highlight the status of children in the past five years. She recommended that given the vast reach of CHILDLINE nationally, reports could be prepared from specific geographic area that will focus on the situation of children, map the extent of change that has taken place in the condition of children vis-à-vis issues such as Education, Violence, Protection, and Health, since the last five years.

Day 3:

The day commenced with the session on 'CHILDLINE Branding - A concept', by Mr Nishit Kumar, Head, Awareness & Advocacy. The concept of Brand as a "relationship" between client groups, various stake holders and different Publics, and the factors that impact the strength of the relationship, was presented. This session highlighted the need for ensuring uniform branding of the CHILDLINE service and 1098 the toll free number for children in need of care and protection, at the national level. The minimum branding norms that have to be adhered to were stressed upon.

This session was followed by a session on "CHILDLINE in India: Analysis of Calls to 1098" which highlighted the trends in calls received over two financial years 2004-05 & 2005-06, ChildNET, call classification. Mr. Denis Joseph, Senior Programme Co-ordinator, CIF made a presentation on the ChildNET calls. The data brought to light that, maximum number of calls received were to seek protection against abuse and tracing of missing children/ families of children lost and were hence most critical. Under abuse 80% of the call received was for physical abuse, and most of the physical abuse took place in the family and at work place. 6% of the calls reported sexual abuse, mostly within the family and in the neighbourhood (70%).

63% of parents/relatives reported that their child had gone missing. 37% children were found and identified as lost.

Since the transfer of the CHILDLINE project from the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment to the Ministry of Women and Child Development, and CIF's status as Mother NGO for CHILDLINE, the disbursement of the grant to CHILDLINE partners has been undertaken by CHILDLINE India Foundation. In this regard, the session on Challenges in disbursement of bloc grant to the CHILDLINE network by Ms. Rubali Chakraborty, Head Finance and Administration, shared the problems encountered on various counts, namely documentary compliances, delays in submission of relevant documents etc, and recommendations were made towards smooth transactions and disbursements between CIF and the CHILDLINE partners

The meet finally concluded with The Way Forward by Ms. Kajol Menon, Executive Director, CHILDLINE India Foundation.