Child Welfare Council lacks facility to train special kids

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: For four-year-old Savitha (name changed), whenever she sees any woman stepping into Child Welfare Council (CWC) office, it gives her hope. Hope of having a family. Her eyes brighten with a ray of hope that her mother has arrived to take her back.
Savitha appears to be so cute and normal that every other parent, who approaches the CWC for adoption, gets attracted and demands her.But even after nearly four years, Savitha is nurtured by the ayahs of the council because she is one among the eight children who are listed under special needy category at CWC, Thiruvananthapuram.
The lack of proper government training institutes for the special children in the state is a major reason cited for non-adoption.
"We got Savitha from Kollam after her mother attempted to bury her alive three years ago. We gave her proper treatment and her physical health improved lot. But her mental state remained the same. She has no intelligence quotient (IQ) and only mutters a few words. As the council doesn't have enough facilities to train such special children, we approached other adoption centres in the state but our efforts were in vain," said a CWC official.
Recently, an autistic boy was sent to an adoption centre located at Kunnamthanam, Kottayam for care and training. But the CWC officials said that they can't handle the boy. The authorities later managed to send the boy to Capernaum Charitable Trust, Kochi.
"The boy becomes violent. We approached every institution in the state but they declined our requests. We were planning to send him to an orphanage in Madhya Pradesh when the centre at Kochi accepted to admit him," said P Shashidharan Nair, CWC administrative officer.
Moreover, these eight children of special needy category have Free for Adoption (FFA) certificates but no parents are ready to adopt them. The council officials claim that the state of mind of the children would entirely change once they get a homely care and have instances to prove the same.
"Kids basically need care of parents and good food. The mental and physical state of the child changes once they get it. Central government will come up with a project for the proper training of the mentally retarded children. But the real issue is none of the parents approaching for adoption gets convinced if the child has any kind of mental instability," said Dr Amar Fettle, pediatrician.