Child Restoration Program

The objective of Our Child Restoration Program is to reunite as many runaway children as possible with their families.

Children run away from home due to various reasons, such as poverty, domestic violence / abuse, broken family, academic pressure, abuse from teachers, attraction to city life and often as the result of child-trafficking which is a huge problem in India.

How Do We Re-unite Children?

The child restoration and the counselling can effectively  bring the children back to live in a protective environment with their own families.  CoME has been conducting outreach works since its beginning to re-unite the run-away or trafficked children found on the streets with their families. We have outreach staff in all the three centres – Delhi, Lucknow and Gorakhpur. Everyday our outreach staff go to the streets and railway stations to rescue the run-away or trafficked children and bring them to our restoration centres. Children wandering in the railway stations are also handed over to us by the Railway Protection Force (RPF).

Our counselors will provide them with counseling, ask them about their details and convince them to return to their homes. We also provide their family members with counselling to ensure a safer environment for the children at home. Many a times, the children will be reluctant to go back to their homes due to the adversities in their families. They find the street life more comfortable and do not want to leave it. It requires much time and effort in re-uniting the children in such cases. Our counsellors and outreach staff coordinate their efforts with the close co-operation of local police authorities and the child welfare committee. The children are produced before the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) in the respective cities. The CWC then decides what to do with the children. If the families can be traced and the safety of the children can be ensured in their families, they will be re-united. If the families cannot be traced or if restoring them endangers their safety, they either stay with CoME or are transferred to other organizations, as per the direction of the CWC. Regular follow-up is done for 2 years for re-united children.

We ramped-up our child restoration efforts in 2004 when our Academy (Apna Ghar) was established in Gorakhpur City.   Nearly 3,000 children have been restored into their families over the years through the tireless work of our staff.   In the first year, 129 children were reunited with their families via our organisation.  This result was very encouraging and it reassured us of the importance of this work.

In some cases, the children had been missing for more than 6 years and the parents had given up any hope of seeing their children again. Just imagine the joy and the delight of these parents when they saw their children again and held them back in their arms!

Expenditure

The expenses incurred by this Program include:

• Part-wages for the staff involved
• Travel expenses, petrol, diesel
• Ravi’s time and expenses for his role with the Child Welfare Committee.

Resources

A Child Restoration Manager co-ordinates this Program across all of the centres.

Resources for this Program in each of our centres are

• Three Outreach staff to contact children on the streets and at railway stations
• One Child Restoration Officer to produce the children to the Child Welfare Committee, complete legal procedures and contact their families.
• One Child Restoration Officer in the organization to take care of the children
• Assistance from members of the Child Welfare Committee

Read about the Next Program.