CHILD Protection & Rights > Child Protection Issues.

What do children without parental care face?

Children without parental care find themselves at a higher risk of abuse and exploitation, inadequate care, discrimination, and their well-being is often insufficiently monitored. They may face malnutrition, illness, physical and psychosocial trauma, and impaired cognitive and emotional development. Unaccompanied girls are at especially high risk of sexual abuse. Both boys and girls are at high risk of trafficking, forced labor, or participation in violence and armed conflict in case of conflicts.

Many children are placed unnecessarily and for too long in institutions, where they receive less of the stimulation and individual attention needed to grow to their full potential. Many children face grossly substandard and over-crowded facilities, inadequate and at times inhumane care, abuse, cruel and degrading treatment, and life-threatening deprivation.

Even in some institutions that are clean and provide adequate food, staff neglect children; babies are left to lie alone in cribs or small beds with no stimulation, play, or adult attention; adolescents are not provided the guidance and care needed to prepare for adulthood. Children and youth are often denied contact with extended family members and communities. Educational opportunities are frequently lacking as medical care. Denied the help and care of a natural family, many of these children and youth are further disadvantaged by systems that perpetuate abuse and neglect. Inadequate care environments can impair children’s emotional and social development.

Situation in India

An average of 29% of the India’s population lives in urban areas. Nearly 50% of the urban population live in precarious conditions lacking of access to basic services and legal housing. The urban population is also rapidly growing due to large-scale internal migration from rural areas to cities for a possible better life. A large proportion of this migrating population ends up residing in slums in inhuman conditions. All this has lead to a huge number of homeless children, pavement dwellers, street and working children and child beggars, who are left alone.

The increasing numbers of children without parental care and entering the institutional system is alarming. These children are not necessarily orphans but destitute and they do have a family somewhere, however, once these children enter the institutional system there are very limited opportunities for them to get out and go back to their families.
An estimated 44 million Indian children are destitute, among them 12.44 million are orphans, many of them living in institutional care. The institutions for children in conflict with the law host about 40,000 children.

The institutions in India fall into four categories:
(1) the institutions formed as part of the juvenile justice system under the Juvenile Justice Act, 2000 to house children in conflict with law pending enquiry;
(2) the institutions to look after the children in need of care and protection (children’s homes and shelter homes) directed by a Child Welfare Committee;
(3) the institutions run by civil society organizations and religious groups to look after children in need of care and protection;
(4) government- run institutions for vulnerable children belonging to the scheduled castes and tribes.
In addition to these institutions are the large number of hostel schools run by the state and the educational institutions. The main problem today is that there is no adequate information on the number of children in any of the states except for those in statutory institutions.