A Holistic Approach

Rescue, Protection and rehabilitation of children at risk and promoting child rights are fundamental to Don Bosco Veedu Society’s work for children.  Involvement for promoting and restoring child rights cannot be devoid of a child’s family. As family is where a child should belong, we often find that in order to provide a conducive atmosphere for holistic growth of children, there is an unavoidable need to create a support system involving the ‘child friendly’ family members as violations faced by children most often are from the family members themselves.

A call came to our child helpline regarding a boy who was not attending school regularly.  Our team visited the home of the child. The family consisted of the mother and her child Kishore (given name). We found that the mother was not sending the child to school. She was not mentally sound and she said that bad weather is causing illness to the child though we noted that there were no weather problems.   She promised to send Kishore to school from the next day.

We made a follow up visit after two weeks and found that she was not sending the child to school. We visited her relatives and local Panchayat authorities. Her brother was ready to take care of the child but due to her mental health problems, she was not ready to listen to her brother.

Enquiring further we found that Smitha (mother of Kishore - given name) was a Civil Engineering diploma holder married to a drunkard. She had lost two children during the delivery. And Kishore is the third child of Smitha. Soon after the birth of Kishore his father dumped the family and went away. By this time Smitha was mentally ill and Kishore became her only support. After an attack of pneumonia, Smitha  would not let the child go out due to fear of illness recurring.

We intervened with the local authorities, police and relations of the family to rescue the child and hospitalize the mother.  After a course of treatment Smitha is under the care of her brother and the child is attending school regularly.

Our experience is that in over 90 percent of the cases there is a need to involve the relatives, neigbourhood and local authorities in order to create a support system to the child so that there is possibility for long standing solutions to issues faced by children. This is the style of intervention that we do even though it is much more tedious.