REHABILITATION OF VULNERABLE CHILDREN
The vision of HEARDS through this program is “Every Child’s Rights Protected, Every Child should be in School and Learning Well.”
Established in the year 1999, HEARDS has grown from being an organization focused on working with child laborers and children in difficulty, to an organization, working on the broad issues of protection and safeguarding the rights of children.
SAY NO TO CHILD LABOUR
CONTEXT
HEARDS started with a mandate of every child in school and learning well. Within this mission, it was also important to reach and help marginalized and vulnerable children to come into the education net and provide them with a safety net.
HEARDS focuses on child labor, children with special needs, orphans, semi-orphans, children suffering from substance abuse, those in conflict with the law, children who are victims of sexual abuse, and children belonging to the most marginalized communities. Through its work, HEARDS strives to provide these children with access to education and so that every child has equality of opportunity.
APPROACH
HEARDS began as an outreach program in the slum communities of Chittoor, to respond to the needs of children belonging to underserved communities, especially those children who were working and not in school.
Currently, HEARDS’s core focus is on child protection issues like working children, orphans, semi-orphans, children with special needs, child beggars, children suffering from substance abuse, those in conflict with the law, children who are victims of sexual abuse, and children belonging to the most marginalized communities. HEARDS strategy includes direct work with children and families in vulnerable communities. Indirect work as a resource organization involves training of different stakeholders working in the field of child protection and partnership with necessary government departments to address these concerns.
DELIVERY MODELS
HEARDS’s overall focus is on prevention, remediation, rehabilitation, policy advocacy, and documentation for evidence-based practice. HEARDS addresses the issues of child rights through multipronged interventions.
One of the key programs of HEARDS is to rescue child laborers from exploitative situations. The aim is to repatriate these children back to their homes and seek rehabilitative measures to sustain them in their local and home settings. To facilitate this, various inter-state connections have been established by HEARDS with the concerned government departments at both source and receiving end. HEARDS also works at important exit (source) and entry (receiving) points at railway stations in order to mitigate unsafe migration and trafficking of children as a major prevention operation. Another crucial prevention program is the Children Homes to set up at various locations within the community to address the concerns of child rights and for local community members to seek redressal for the same. Child Rights Sessions are also conducted in schools as well as in the community to spread awareness on child protection concerns.
On the rehabilitation front, HEARDS provides rehabilitation centers for the rescued child laborers. HEARDS has been running child labor rehabilitation centers since 2002 and we were able to successfully mainstream 1070 children into the regular Government schools. We are extremely thankful to our donors. This is for the children who attend the school on regular basis (up to 70% attendance) and it is monitored by HEARDS staff in consultation with the schools. HEARDS is also planning to run residential shelters for rescued child laborers in Chittoor as a demonstration of best practices.
REACH AND SCALE
HEARDS’s activities extend to various Blocks of Chittoor District in Andhra Pradesh. Up to 2020-21, HEARDS worked extensively at both source and receiving ends to cover 97 villages in 5 blocks of Chittoor District (rural areas) and almost all the urban slums of Chittoor. All in all, HEARDS reaches around 250 children annually through its direct and indirect interventions.