Abuse at children’s home points to monitoring gaps

Trichy: The recent case of verbal and physical abuse of children at a govt-aided home and the subsequent relocation of 84 girls to other homes have turned the spotlight on monitoring lapses on the part of the district child protection office.Sources said there are 15 homes housing about 500 children in need of care and protection. While the administration was quick to act by suspending govt subsidies to the home and AWPS police arresting four staff members after the issue surfaced, activists have flagged the failure to take preventive steps. They alleged that meetings of home committee are not being held properly. Sources said the inquiry committee set up by the district collector flagged that the institutional care protection officer had not conducted adequate inspections. "As a disciplinary action, the officer has been issued notice seeking an explanation," a district official told TOI.Sources added that home committee meetings, involving the DCPO, institutional care protection officer, CWC member and other stakeholders in each of the homes, are to be conducted every three months. "From interacting with the 80-odd students, it was noticed that the DCPO at the time and the institutional care protection officer had been careless in not noticing the issue earlier, and this has been included in our report. This issue has been going on since last year," Vijaya, chairperson of Tamil Nadu Commission for Protection of Child Rights, who visited the children, told TOI.The district had been functioning with a DCPO in charge for the past month after the earlier officer was transferred on routine grounds. On Wednesday, a new full-time DCPO, Saravanan, took charge. However, former DCPO P Ragul Ganthi denied the allegations of not conducting visits. "It is just that the institutional care protection officer had not submitted a report in the last quarter," he said. Child rights activist A Devaneyan said, "The action is more reactionary instead of finding ways to prevent something like this in future. The DLCPC, led by the district collector, should step up regular monitoring mechanisms to ensure that field visits are not treated as ritualistic," he said.