KAVAL
[Psycho-Social Care for Children in Conflict with Law]
(Programme under ICPS, Ministry of Woman &Child ,Government of Kerala –
Technically Assisted by NIMHANS)
TRADA
{ Partner NGO for Kaval programme in Kottayam district }
This is an era that has achieved miraculous progress in the fields of science and technology. On the one side, there’s great progress and at the same time, on the other hand, there we can see great moral and social depletion. The statistics says that, there is an uncontrollable growth in the number of crimes related to children, these days. The law of the nation seemed very lighter and considerate towards children even if it tries to be very strict. Earlier, no effective steps had been taken to track the fate of these children once they were set free. As a result, many of them often turned repeated offenders after being turned away by their respective families or society. Eventually, they ended up in the hands of the very same unscrupulous elements that pushed them into the world of crime in the first place. It’s very clear that, no crime prevention strategy is complete without effective measures to address the problem of recidivism. Here in this context, the state government emphasizes the crucial importance of effective programmes and measures to supervise and assist children who are in conflict with law and support their social reintegration for the prevention of recidivism. Here lies the significance of the novel programme by the state government- KAVAL .
KAVAL, a programme launched by the Social Justice Department, Govt. of Kerala (Presently, changed to Department of Woman and Child Development) under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICPS), with the technical support of National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, through selected NGO’s for the reintegration of children in conflict with law to social mainstream in the state of Kerala.
Aim:
To provide psychosocial care for children in conflict with law towards by ensuring holistic care, rehabilitating and reintegrating them into the society.
Objectives:
Developing individual care plan for children
To provide psychosocial care for children in conflict with law
To provide psychosocial support for families of children in conflict with law to ensure qualitative family environment
To network with other service providers Juvenile Justice board, CWC, SJPU DCPU, school, vocational and skill training institutions for providing services for children.
Conduct regular follow ups for children to ensure services are carried out for children as mentioned in ICP
In the primary phase, the programme was implemented in 3 districts which are, Thiruvananthapuram, Palakkad and Kozhikode on a pilot basis with the support of selected seven NGOs. And now in the second phase, the programme scaled up into 6 more districts ,Pathanamthitta, Kottayam, Ernakulam, Thrissur, Malappuram and Kannur. One of the NGO’s selected to implement KAVAL Programme in Kottayam district is TRADA. The organization started working in this programme since January 2018. And 50 number of children are chosen by JJB and approved by the Magistrate are transferred through DCPU to the NGO for the initial year.The KAVAL Programme ensures holistic development of the children in conflict with law and tries to reintegrate them to the family and society.
The programme tries to provide the children a quality of life and to ensure their participation to the main stream of the society. This task is achieving by providing a number of interventions such as their education improvement, psychological balancing, drug-free life, quality time spending with family, relationship building, peer group adjustment, stress management, life skill and soft skill developments, vocational training, career guidance, legal awareness and so on. Along with these individual aspects of interventions we ensure enhanced family and social support for the children. The KAVAL programme tries for reducing criminal recidivism by addressing the social reintegration challenges faced, nowadays.
