NGO struggles to find home for disabled boy, 15

CHENNAI: A 15-year-old boy with developmental disabilities, who escaped from an orphanage to look for his parents, was rescued by Childline volunteers from

Kodambakkam

on Sunday evening. What followed was a six-hour-long struggle to find a temporary shelter for the teenager in the city till his family could be traced.

The child welfare committee in Chennai, informed by the NGO, initially referred the boy to the government children’s home in Royapuram. However, officials there refused to take him in saying they had no facility for mentally challenged children.

Childline then called Sri Arunodayam Charitable Trust in Kolathur, one of the two government-aided orphanages in the city that cater exclusively to abandoned children with special needs. “We had to turn them down as there is no space for more children in our facility,” said S Iyyappan who runs two separate facilities for girls and boys with physical and mental disabilities.

District child protection unit contacted the Bala Vihar home for mentally challenged people in

Kilpauk

late on Sunday night. The volunteers who arrived at the facility with the child had to plead with the security people to allow the boy in. Finally at around 10.30pm, more than six hours after he was found on the streets, the boy was given shelter.

When TOI contacted Bala Vihar, the administrative staff said the security guards were initially reluctant to let the boy in as the volunteers who accompanied them hadn’t identified themselves. “We usually close the gates at 9pm,” said S Khan, the project officer at the home. “The minute CWC and Childline contacted us, we let them in,” he said. The boy, workers at the home discovered, had been an inmate at Bala Vihar in 2015. “He was referred to us by the CWC in Tiruvallur after his parents surrendered him saying it was difficult to take care of him,” said a staffer. Three months later, his father took him away and put him in another child care institution, from where he escaped on Sunday to find his family.

“All the children in the residential facility had gone on vacation. He was alone. From the little we interacted with him, he seemed to want to return to his family,” said the staffer at Bala Vihar. On Monday evening, the teenager finally got what he set out for, with his parents coming to claim him.

The incident, experts say, has exposed a crucial lacuna in the state – the absence of sufficient facilities for children with special needs. There are only three government-aided homes for such children, the third one in Mayiladuthurai. Iyyappan said they had placed a proposal before the

Directorate of Social Defence

to start an additional facility for such children.

Virgil D Sami

, the executive director of

Arunodhaya

who is tasked with running Childline in railway stations, said they rescue at least two children every month from Egmore and Chennai Central stations – most of them between 10 and 15 years. “We urgently need a reception unit for these children as the existing homes are full,” she said. She recommended recruiting additional staff in the government boys’ home in Royapuram for these children.