Register all Child Care Institutions: Maneka Gandhi to States

NEW DELHI: To achieve the twin objectives of bringing accountability and facilitating swift adoption, the Union Minister for Women and Child Development, Maneka Gandhi has written to all the state governments asking them to ensure that child care institutions ( CCI) should be registered with the government.

In a letter, written fortnight back, to Ministers for Social Welfare in all the States, Gandhi has made it clear that no unregistered institution should be given “any financial assistance until they are registered”.

In her letter, read by ET, Gandhi has also asked the state governments to “make assessment of the availability of probation officers to make efforts for filling up the vacancies” in all the child care institutions. Gandhi has also referred to a letter written previously by her on the issue.

Referring to the said (previous) letter, she said “this was written with the intent of enforcing minimum standards of care for the services provided to children in the CCIs and for ensuring stringent monitoring mechanisms of the CCIs and to have a survey conducted to identify such homes and compel them to register under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000), failing which children residing in these homes may be shifted to other registered institutions”.

The Union Minister also referred to a recent decision by the Supreme Court wherein the apex court had expressed concern about the progress made with regard to implementation of Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act and appointment of probationary officer under the provisions of JJ Act. Underlining the significance of the issue, she said that “this is a critical issue” which the Supreme Court is “taking very seriously”.

The ministry also wants the institutions to be converted into adoption agencies to expedite adoption process. At present there is a huge difference between the numbers of children available with the adoption agencies in comparison to the waiting list of parents wanting to adopt child.