Make older children in care homes free for adoption: Smriti Irani

The Minister said child care homes have helped seven lakh children across the country in the last nine years

Addressing a regional symposium on ‘Child Protection, Safety and Child Welfare’, attended by members of child welfare committees and officials from child care institutions, Ms. Irani asked the committees to visit child care homes and review the cases of older children who could be made free for adoption at the earliest. File | Photo Credit: ANI

Union Minister for Women and Child Development Smriti Irani on Sunday said that child care homes have helped seven lakh children across the country in the last nine years even as she asked these institutions to look into the infrastructure gaps present in their respective areas.

Addressing a regional symposium on ‘Child Protection, Safety and Child Welfare’, attended by members of child welfare committees and officials from child care institutions, Ms. Irani asked the committees to visit child care homes and review the cases of older children who could be made free for adoption at the earliest.

According to official data, around 66,000 children reside in child care homes across the country but less than 3,000 of them are legally free for adoption.

Ms. Irani mentioned that the Ministry has till now reviewed two States, looked into 9,000 cases of older children and identified 164 such children who could be made legally free for adoption.

Direction to NCPCR

The Minister also asked child care homes to look into the infrastructure gaps in their respective areas and requested the apex child rights body – National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) – to review these gaps and report to the Ministry so that they can be brought up in the upcoming Budget.

Ms. Irani said that in the last nine years, around three lakh children, who were declared missing, have been reunited with their parents.

Earlier, under Child Protection Services, ₹2,000 per month was offered for non-institutional childcare, but this has now been increased to ₹4,000 per month under Mission Vatsalya, she added.

The symposium was attended by more than 2,000 representatives from Child Welfare Committees (CWCs), Juvenile Justice Boards (JJBs), Members of Village Child Protection Committees (VCPC) and anganwadi workers.

Representatives of Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Union Territories of Delhi, Chandigarh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh participated in the symposium.