Delhi govt opens two quarantine centres for unattended, rescued children

The centres are also catering to children, aged between six and 18 years, whose entire family are down with Covid-19 or are have been hospitalised.

The Delhi government’s department of women and child development (WCD) has set up two quarantine centres, especially for children who are either found unattended or rescued by NGOs or police, before sending them to designated child care institutions (CCIs) or children homes.

A quarantine center for girls aged between 6 to 18 years in Jaunapur Village in Delhi. (Sourced)

The centres are also catering to children, aged between six and 18 years, whose entire family are down with Covid-19 or are have been hospitalised. The quarantine centre for girls has been set up in a child care home run by an NGO, Butterflies, in south-west Delhi’s village Jaunapur. For boys, the quarantine centre has been set up at the government-operated children home in Lajpat Nagar. Both the quarantine centres became functional this week.

Delhi minister for women and child development Rajendra Pal Gautam said the department decided to set up such centres to prevent the spread of Covid-19 among children residing in children’s homes or CCIs across the Capital. “Normally, children found unattended or rescued are directly sent to child care institutions or children’s homes after producing them before district child welfare committees. In the current circumstances, we cannot let new admissions mingle with the children who are already there in the CCIs. Therefore, it was decided to set up these two quarantine centres for children aged between six and 18 years,” he said.

The children brought to the quarantine centres will be isolated here for 14 days, following which the department willl conducts their Covid-19 test before transferring them to children’s homes or CCIs. There are 101 children’s homes in Delhi.

The two centres are providing all the basic facilities to these children, as any other CCI, and also have a full-time nurse to monitor them. They also have television and indoor games facilities for the residents. The WCD has also roped in doctors to regularly check the children for any symptoms.

Currently, there are 11 boys and 13 girls living in the quarantine centres. Yogesh Mishra, in-charge at the Lajpat Nagar centre, said 10 of the boys were rescued by childline workers from railway stations and bus-stands. “Any new child has to undergo an RT-PCR test. We keep them in a separate room till the report comes. In case any child is found Covid positive, he or she is sent to district Covid care facilities. If the report returns negative, they live with other children staying at the facility,” he said.

The department has constituted a district task force for Covid-19 positive children, who are in CCIs or whose parents have died due to the virus. Mishra said he also got one such case through the task force wherein an autistic child was found with his unconscious Covid-positive mother in Uttam Nagar last week. “The mother was rushed to a hospital and the child brought here. However, after realizing that he has autism, we had to send him to Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences. His mother passed away at the hospital on Wednesday night,” he said.

Officials at the Butterflies child care center in Jaunapur said a majority of girls staying with them have been rescued either by police or the district task force. “Most of these are cases of elopement. They were found unattended either at the railway station or bus stand. We have been maintaining social distancing within the centre as well,” said Mohit Pal, in charge of the facility.

The Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR), which is also monitoring these centres, said that it’s also exploring the possibility of setting up full-fledged Covid care centres for children. “We are trying to get at least some beds reserved for children in the existing government Covid care facilities so that in case the situation worsens, the children do not suffer. We are also closely monitoring these two centres and ensuring that they provide all possible facilities so that children do not go through any trauma during isolation,” said Ranjana Prasad, DCPCR member.