View source for Police new 'guardians' of children with mental disability

[[India]]

Worries of the parents of mentally disabled children may get over soon as the Varanasi police are all set to take their 'guardianship'.

The Varanasi police have decided to take this responsibility as a part of community policing, which will be formally launched by the ADG (law and order).

The initiative, considered to be the first of its nature by the police of any state, aims at identifying searching each and every mentally disabled children and ensure the availability of certificates of ailment for each and every child from the chief medical officer, benefits of the schemes of ministry of disability affairs of government of India, ARUNIM national trust, their training and counselling with the help of NGOs.

This initiative is brainchild of deputy SP, Rahul Kumar, who is presently in the charge of circle officer Sadar. When contacted Rahul he disclosed, "During my posting at Noida several parents of mentally disabled children met me with the worries like who would take care of their children after them. It compelled me to study and work on this issue and during my three years stay in Noida I also worked for the welfare of such children with the help of some NGOs."

The SSP said that Rahul met him with the proposal to start this programme as a part of community policing in the district along with a complete survey and study report. Three police stations including Rohania, Jansa and Lohta fall under the jurisdiction of CO Sadar. And the survey conducted by the police in this circle resulted in detection of 300 children while the records of social welfare department of the district showed presence of only 200 such children in the entire district.

The proposal for running this programme under community policing had been finalised by Rahul with the help of Dr Tulsi of Deva International Society for Child Care, one of the directors, Association for Rehabilitation under National Trust Initiative of Marketing (ARUNIM national trust) of Ministry of Disability Affairs of Government of India.

He said as per the guidelines of the ministry, the district magistrate becomes the legal guardian of a mentally disabled child after identification but this identification process was not easy in the society due to the existing system. Due to the same reason, registration of 100% mentally disabled children is not possible and most of them remain deprived of the government schemes and honorarium.

The SSP said that as a part of this programme each police station will collect details of each and every mentally disabled child of the area concerned and would maintain record register with all the details including details of their families. With the help of NGOs, camps will be organised at each police station. The first camp will be held at Rohania police station on Saturday. Dr Tulsi said all the children will be examined at the camps to complete the process of seeking certificate from the CMO which would be further forwarded to the social welfare department to avail benefits as per the guidelines of the ministry.

The SSP said each beat constable would adopt two mentally disabled children and will check the condition of beneficiaries and progress in their health and behaviour on weekly basis. Rahul said other major reason for initiating this programme was to ensure their safety as many of them are killed in rural belt to end their claim on property.

The trafficking of these children and killing for other reasons also takes place for monetary reasons but most of these cases remain unreported. The SSP said after regular monitoring of these children the possibility of such crimes will also end.

Source: TOI