The Future of Foster Care and Child Protection in India and Sri Lanka

Abstract

India and Sri Lanka have a shared history, which has led to the longstanding use of institutional care of children. Children in institutions were often disabled, the victims of gender violence and their families lacked the necessary resources to provide care. This was true in the past and is today. There is a slow movement to end institutional care in India and Sri Lanka through the development of family-based alternative care (foster care). For this change, stakeholders needed to engage at all levels in changing policy and practice. Noteworthy is the legislative taken in India in the year 2015 to amend and revise its existing Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2000. The new Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2015 included provisions on foster care under the chapter Reintegration and Rehabilitation. Sri Lanka took formal action in 2019 with the passage of The National Alternative Care Policy for Children in Sri Lanka. This Act defines all forms of alternative care including foster care and kinship care. These legislative changes aligned with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) asserting a child’s rights framework. Collaboration, training and exchange of practices have been key to the development of foster care and will continue to help this monumental change process.

Introduction

India and Sri Lanka have a shared history of colonisation and the use of institutional care of children. The historical use of institutional care for children was based on ‘rescue’. Children needing rescue were children born into structural systems of poverty, children shut out of society due to disabling conditions and children victimised by gender-based violence. Today, the legacy of institutional care of children is being challenged in India and Sri Lanka, but children in need of alternatives are vulnerable, as their families lack economic resources necessary to parent. Many children have disabling conditions impacting their development. In addition, many children are victims of gender-based violence. Moving from ‘rescue’ to protection needs changes in policy and practice. Today, INGOs working with government actors are slowly making progress by introducing foster care as right for children without parental care. International collaboration through transfer of knowledge by sharing resources has helped to create a slow shift in the culture of care in India and Sri Lanka. This article will describe the progress in India and Sri Lanka in the development of foster care as a key service area in child protection. It will highlight changes in policy and practice that recognises a child’s right to live in a family. Finally, it will discuss positive collaboration and transfer of knowledge between India and Sri Lanka.

Background

Setting the Context: Institutional Care

Life in institutional care holds little promise of safety. For instance, in India, Phillips and others report on a government investigation, which (sic) revealed that out of 9,589 childcare institutions across the country, 1,575 minors were victims of sexual abuse, and 189 were victims of pornography (PTI, 2018 as cited by Phillips et al., 2019). Phillips et al. (2019) echo similar findings concerning sexual abuse of children in Sri Lanka. Rohanachandra et al. (2022) in a study of children in residential care in Sri Lanka found the children to have elevated emotional and behavioural problems including suicidal ideation. Both countries report the use of harsh discipline by childcare staff. All this raises concerns for children experiencing complex trauma and lacking supports needed for resiliency needed for healthy development.

Even with the risks, institutional care of children in India is common. India has the highest rate of institutional care in the world (Catholic Relief Services, 2023). The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) conducted the audit of 7,164 Child Care Institutions (CCI) across the country. Realising the risk of 256,369 children residing in these CCIs, India is slowly shifting its focus towards non-institutional family-based care services. Many children needing alternative care have living parents. When the need for care arises, institutional care is a known entity resulting in its continued use. There is still a lack of family strengthening and foster family care, but progress has been made in the development of foster care policy in India (IACN, 2022). The picture in Sri Lanka finds ‘14,179 children in 414 institutions located in all nine provinces in Sri Lanka (National Institute of Social Development, 2013. p. 7)’. Among the institutional options in Sri Lanka are childcare institutions, orphanages, safe homes, detention and remand homes, certified schools and SOS villages (National Institute of Social Development, 2013). Sixty-one percent of children with disabilities in India are attending educational institutions (Government of India Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation National Statistical Office Social Statistics Division, 2021, p. 32). Children’s Institutions in Sri Lanka report 33% of children having a range of needs from hearing loss and learning disabilities, to mental health needs (National Institute of Social Development, 2013, p. 8).

History and Legislative Change

India and Sri Lanka have a long history of adoption of infants and young children as a form of alternative care. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and its related protocol on Alternative Care established a framework concerning a child’s right to grow up in a family (UNCRC, 1989). The Convention reached well beyond adoption to include foster care. To achieve the goal of the UNCRC, legislative action was required in India and Sri Lanka.

India amended its Juvenile Justice (Care & Protection of Children) Act 2015 where foster care was addressed the in Children’s Act, but kinship care was not defined in the Act, nor was it explained as an option in the alternative care policy. In Sri Lanka, children’s justice law approved in 1939 had no thought of foster care. The 2005 tsunami left children orphaned. What followed was The Sri Lankan Tsunami Act of 2005, which referenced the use of foster care for tsunami orphans (Tsunami Act, 2005). This act did not lead to the formalisation of foster care to end the deinstitutionalisation of children. Sri Lanka took formal action in 2019 with the passage of the National Alternative Care Policy for Children in Sri Lanka. This act specifically defines all forms of alternative care addressing foster care and kinship care. Both India and Sri Lanka use a fit person standard to determine how a person not related might provide care for a child. India and Sri Lanka now have a policy process in place to develop foster care.

Stakeholders and Collaboration

All parenting is culture-bound (Bornstein, 2012). When India and Sri Lanka introduced the concept of foster care, it raised cultural issues by suggesting families could care for a child not related by law or sanguinity. With this came a fear of stigma concerning why one would care for a child who was not one’s own. Stakeholders needed help to challenge the culture of institutional care and normalise the place of foster care.

Systems change involves the engagement of stakeholders at all levels of the system such as the Minister of Women and Child Affairs and Social Empowerment and Chairperson of the National Child Protection Authority from Sri Lanka Ministry of Woman and Child Affairs and Dry Zone Development Department of Probation and Child Care Services, (2019). Judges and child advocates in India and Sri Lanka have been involved in training. These actors set the stage for policy change. All national ministries such as Education and Health are important to foster care practice and policy development to assure that the child’s needs are holistically met. INGOs such as the Centre for Excellence in Alternative Care included stakeholders in training to understand their role in promoting a rights-based approach to the care of children by providing alternative care options. INGOs such as UNICEF, SOS Villages, CERI and Their Future Today are helping to implement foster care and child protection projects by building capacity for foster care in regions and local communities where there has been little understanding.

There have been other collaborative steps to improve child protection and foster care. For example, in 2022, CERI and UNICEF organised an exchange visit with Sri Lanka government officials visiting the state of Rajasthan in India. This exchange helped policymakers to envisage family-based care models. The acting manager of the Centre for Excellence in India spoke at a Sri Lankan judges’ conference challenging the judges to use their role to provide children with the opportunity to grow up in a family. Similarly, representatives from Their Future to Today provided training for the University of Ruhunu with a goal to develop academic curriculum to include alternative care. They also spoke to the national probation meeting in Sri Lanka outlining the importance of child assessment to promote the use of foster care.

The Centre for Excellence, India, has developed policy and practice manuals in foster care including a pocket guide for foster care. These manuals have been made available to Sri Lankan INGOs such as Their Future Today. Both India and Sri Lanka have hosted regular guided in-country conversations with stakeholders involved in foster care development, emphasising good practices. The Minister of Women and Child Affairs and the National Child Protection Authority from Sri Lanka and the acting Managing Director of Centre for Excellence in Alternative Care, India, attended the International Foster Care Organization’s 2017 World Conference in Malta. This helped to expand their understanding of foster care around the globe.

The Centre for Excellence is India’s leading organisation family-based care by targeting implementation of foster care in all areas in India and the Asian region. The Centre for Excellence developed knowledge materials, worked to build capacity in local areas, provided training to advance foster care and kinship care. The Centre for Excellence developed a video on foster care processes in Hindi to create awareness in the community and for stakeholders. The Centre for Excellence collaborated with agencies such as National Commission for Protection of Child Rights to develop ‘User Guide on Foster Care’ released in 2018. The Centre for Excellence has provided policy development support to Punjab, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand. The Centre for Excellence partnered with UNICEF to start pilot projects in the State of Bihar and Chhattisgarh. The Centre for Excellence recruited 192 foster families with 22 children placed in care. The Centre for Excellence advanced the development of foster care in India but found a need for training to meet the needs of children with disabilities (Persons with Disabilities, 2021). For example, there has been risk of foster care disruption because of foster carers not understanding how to manage toileting of children with Down’s syndrome. These experiences call for improved foster care practices in the preparation and training of foster carers to meet the needs of children with special needs.

Sri Lanka is making use of collaborative relationships to move forward in the development of alternative care. A legal advocate in Sri Lanka developed a small group home (Heartbeat Centre) for girls sexually victimised. This group home provides an option to keep these girls from being placed in detention or remand homes. A police officer has fostered two of the girls showing the court the positive aspects of foster care for victims of gender-based violence.

Country Challenges: COVID-19

The global pandemic of COVID 19 hindered progress in implementing family-based foster care creating a crisis in the care and protection of children. India’s National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) reported ‘at least 1,742 children have lost both their parents to COVID, while 7,464 have lost one parent (Guardian, 2021)’. These numbers are thought to be vastly under reported (Catholic Relief Services, 2022). The COVID-19 children create a complicated picture of how and in what way should kinship care, foster care or even institutional care be provided to these children. In 2020, the Supreme Court of India, hearing the Writ Petition issued with ‘detailed steps to be taken by Child Welfare Committees, Juvenile Justice Boards, Institutions (CCI), and state governments to protect children in alternative care (Child Catholic Relief Services 2020, p. 4)’. The Honourable Supreme Court of India filled the absence of clearly defined processes as to how to respond to COVID-19 affected children. Many children in CCIs were returned to family and kin without support or preparation. These hasty reunifications with family raised concerns about child trafficking and child marriage. The Childline in India reported a ‘17% increase in distress calls related to the early marriage of girls in June and July of 2020 compared to 2019’ (BBC News, 2020).

Since 2019, Sri Lanka had an even more complicated situation. Progress to introduce foster family care was limited due to the collapse of the economy because of a country-wide lockdown due to COVID-19. Political instability in July of 2022 with the overthrow of the president worsened conditions in a country without essentials necessary for the well-being of families and children resulting in a lack of food, medicine and fuel (Kirby, 2022). Public transportation was at a standstill and children’s school attendance was impacted by food insecurity with children too hungry to learn. Field reports from southern provinces note children in state-run institutions lack medical equipment like sterile infant and toddler needles for intravenous care and the lack of age-appropriate formula resulting in watering down the food supplement. Advocates for change in both countries stress the need for monitoring and reliable data collection.

Beyond Foster Care: Other Examples of Good Practice

A strong foster care system needs a continuum of other complementary family preservation programmes such as family-strengthening efforts. Today, family-strengthening projects are receiving attention by policymakers. In Sri Lanka, family-strengthening is offered by the Foundation of Goodness providing education and recreation for children, coaching of parents, along with medical care and food. Their Future Today provides a nursery school with outreach to parents in the Galle region of Sri Lanka. CERI has developed a cash assistance programme in Sri Lanka to support kinship carers. SOS Children’s Villages, India, provides family-strengthening with health, education, nutrition and supporting adults to learn a vocational trade. India provides one of the strongest examples of family strengthening found in its Preventive and Rehabilitative Sponsorship through Mission Vatsalya, 2022, the Central Government sponsored scheme for the welfare and rehabilitation of children in difficult circumstances. Mission Vatsalya defines sponsorship as financial support to the biological family to assure for the health, education and developmental needs of the child with the goal of family preservation (Ministry of Women and Child Development Government of India, 2022). The Miracle Foundation, India, uses sponsorship as defined in Mission Vatsalya for family reunification. Each service noted is an example of good practice and works to keep children with their families, but the needs far outstrip the resources.

Recommendations: The Way Forward

What will the future hold? It is the contention of this article that the future of foster care involves the shared vision of deinstitutionalisation of children, recognising a child’s right to have a family. Change such as this is not a top-down process but an integrated process of listening at each point in the system on how to shape reform. Listening needs to value the voices of foster parents, birth parents and children. Foster care does not exist in a silo, so the future must see foster care as one part of a child protection system using kinship care, family preservation through family strengthening programmes and family reunification activities creating a holistic integrative service system. Drawing on strong policy examples such as Mission Vatsala provides a framework for change.

Change happens with education. There is a need to educate stakeholders in the use of alternative care. Education of those with power to change the systems such as policymakers and implementers need exposure to peers with opportunities for exchange visits with other likeminded professionals. University administrators and academics need to be supported in developing curriculum for social workers with a focus on child protection as a specialty area of study. This work too is enriched with academic exchange. Existing public servants such as probation officers in Sri Lanka, who work in child protection, need to be trained in child-centred and family-focused practices. This training needs a child’s rights focus emphasising the negative impact of institutional care and the place of trauma-informed practices needed to help children to be resilient. Foster carers need to be assessed and trained as an important part of the child protection system. ‘Deep engagement’ of stakeholders through their respective roles and education is intended to promote a process of informed decision making needed for the protection and care of children (Winthrop & Sengeh, 2022).

Collaboration and building networks in and between countries will help India and Sri Lanka and other nations in this region to make meaning of lessons from the field. India has developed successful pilot programmes in foster care, which can serve as models of practice. These models should be promoted across the region to bring positive attitudinal change. Sri Lanka has used case-specific advocacy to give voice to children in need of alternative care. Exchanging examples of practice has the potential to enrich a regional view of alternative care. Strengthening regional networks can provide a means to transform practices and improve child protection with mutual support. All the actors in India and Sri Lanka as well as from the region might well stand on UNICEF’s statement: ‘There is no time like the present for reform, (UNICEF, 2022).