Sumanta Kar is the Secretary General, SOS Children’s Villages of India, the largest self-implementing child care NGO in the country, providing end-to-end group foster care for children without parental care. Mr Kar, who has over 30 years of experience in the field of alternative care, shared his insights on child welfare in India with The Daily Guardian, ahead of the World Day of Social Justice on 20 February.
Q: The deepening social injustice seems to be becoming one of the principal characteristics of the contemporary world. How do you think this is affecting the welfare of children?
A: The term social injustice brings up many words to the mind: discrimination, disparity, inequity, inequality and many other such.
Social injustice deeply impacts the roots of society, stunting holistic progress and growth. It targets the vulnerable, and this could include societies, communities, caregivers and children. It goes without saying that since children are the future of the world, social injustice and indifference can stunt their wholesome and holistic growth, impacting the future of humanity, as a whole.
Q: How does an open and welcoming society, where children feel integrated, help?
A: A society that understands the challenges that vulnerable sections of society face, and works towards their upliftment, serves as a catalysis for change positive and sustainable change. Ensuring this is not just the responsibility of Governments and States, but also of citizens. If each one of us is determined to serve as an Ambassador of Change, at any level, with whatever resources one can muster, then a Domino Effect can be ensured. Such a society can ensure the empowerment and subsequent equality for all its members, slowly yet gradually. This, of course, applies to the empowerment of children too.
Q: How do identity and protection issues shape their daily lives and experience of social justice?
A: Children are aware of different social and economic identities. This reminder is almost consistent and omnipresent. When the identities are liberating, children/individuals are empowered. However, when their identities stem out of discrimination, it stunts their overall growth and development, impacting them negatively. Child safeguarding and protection are other important challenges that demand urgent and consistent addressing.
Q: Does social injustice also apply to those children who are specially abled or are parentless?
A: Social injustice can apply to anyone, more so to those who are vulnerable; this also includes parentless or specially abled children. Being vulnerable makes them more susceptible to denial of opportunities, and vice versa – a vicious circle. For the vulnerable, it is important that social injustice is curtailed as much as possible through generation of awareness, enhancement of equality and empowerment that enables the solutions offered to be sustainable.
Q: Do you have any specific programmes at SOSCVI that empower especially abled children?
A: One of our Basket of Care Solutions focusses on children with special needs. We enable especially abled children without parental care to live a normal life, through a uniquely designed Children’s Village, at Khajuri Kalan, which is equipped with infrastructure for medical care and training. Children and youth with special abilities, live and grow in a loving home that is watched over by trained Mothers and support staff ensuring personalised care and training for each child. Imparting care, vocational skills, exposure to creative fields and sports help bring out the best in the children.
Q: Share your insight on ways SOSCVI helps prevent social injustice.
A: For over five decades, SOS Children’s Villages of India continues to provide children without parental care or at the risk of losing it, a value chain of quality care services that goes beyond childcare alone, ensuring comprehensive child development. Our customized care interventions such as Family Like Care, Family Strengthening, Kinship Care, Short Stay Homes, Foster Care, Education & Youth Skilling, Emergency Childcare and Special Needs Childcare are aimed at transforming lives and making children into self-reliant and contributing members of society. We empower vulnerable families in communities to become financially independent, thereby enabling them to create safe and nurturing spaces for children under their care.
Q: Do children being taken care under the Family like Care programme face any discrimination in schools or other institutions for being parentless? How do you help them with its effect on their mental health?
A: The Family Like Care programme, as the name suggests, is a model that provides care, love and security to parentless or abandoned children with the support of a SOS Mother and Family. The SOS Mother provides unconditional love, ensuring a long-term relationship that continues even after a child becomes self-sufficient. There is no question of discrimination, as the presence of a Mother, siblings, and, hence, family are all present ensuring that no gaps are left in the wholesome development of the child. Integration in society is enabled via wholesome childcare and development, including education and skilling.
Q: Why can Kinship Care and Family Strengthening programmes be citied as programmes aimed at securing child welfare?
A: Both programmes are part of our Basket of Care Solutions. The Family Strengthening Programme is a community based outreach approach, which is focussed on empowering vulnerable families and communities so that they can adequately care for their children. Children belonging to vulnerable families and communities are at a risk of being abandoned and, therefore, through the programme, the focus is to prevent children from losing parental care. We support families / individuals in generating sustainable income, while building their capacity to ensure that children are provided with an environment where they are well cared for and their basic rights to education, skilling, health and nutrition are fulfilled. The Kinship Care Programme, introduced in 2017, ensures that children without parental care grow up with minimal disruption to their educational, cultural and social lives. Under this initiative, children who have lost their biological parents are cared for by their extended families or relatives. Our interventions safeguard the right of every parentless child to grow up in a familiar environment by strengthening the capability and income of the extended biological families, so that they can provide proper care and education, till the child attains adulthood. Both programmes address different scenarios and challenges. It is the quality of care in different care settings that enables the child to grow and develop to his/her own full potential.
