Mission Vatsalya
Description
Mission Vatsalya
The Ministry of Women and Child Development is implementing a Centrally Sponsored Scheme “Mission Vatsalya”, subsumed an erstwhile Child Protection Services (CPS) Scheme, since 2009- 10 for the welfare and protection of children. The vision of Mission Vatsalya is to secure a healthy and happy childhood for each and every child in India, ensure opportunities to enable them to discover their full potential and assist them in flourishing in all respects, in a sustained manner, foster a sensitive, supportive and synchronized ecosystem for the development of children
Mission Vatsalya is a roadmap to achieve development and child protection priorities aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It lays emphasis on child rights, advocacy, and awareness along with strengthening the juvenile justice care and protection system with the motto to ‘leave no child behind'. The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 provisions, and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 form the basic framework for the implementation of the mission.
Key Objectives of the Mission
• Prioritisation of children in the scheme of Administration keeping the Centrality of the Child during all the activities and actions taken under the Mission.
• Best interest of the Child while designing or delivering projects and programmes and take affirmative action to ensure the right to grow in a happy family environment with a strong social safety net to support families.
• Ensuring Children’s right to Survival, Development, Protection, and Participation.
• To establish essential services and strengthen emergency outreach, non-institutional care within the family and community, and institutional care counseling and support services at the national, regional, state, and district levels.
• To ensure appropriate inter sector response at all levels, coordinate and network with all allied systems to promote convergent efforts for seamless service delivery to children.
• To strengthen child protection at the family and community level, equip families and communities to identify risks and vulnerabilities affecting children, and create and promote preventive measures to protect children from situations of vulnerability, risk, and abuse.
• Encourage private sector partnerships and interventions to support children within the framework of law.
• Raise public awareness, educate the public about child rights, vulnerabilities, and measures for protection sponsored by the government, and engage the community at all levels as a stakeholder in ensuring the best interest of children.
• To build capacities of duty holders & service providers at all levels.
• Monitor progress on objective parameters against well-defined Outputs and Outcomes.
• Participation of Panchayats and Municipal Local Bodies at the village level and at the ward and the urban cluster level within the urban municipal ward, for sustained assessment of the issues deserving attention, implementation of appropriate interventions, regular monitoring to develop a robust social safety net for children
Components under Mission Vatsalya will include statutory bodies; service delivery structures; institutional care/services; non-institutional community-based care; emergency outreach services; training and capacity building.
Mission Vatsalya scheme supports the children through Non-Institutional Care under Private Aided Sponsorship wherein interested sponsors (individuals/ institutions/companies/ banks/ industrial units/ trusts etc.) can provide assistance to children in difficult circumstances. The District Magistrates take measures to encourage individuals or Public/ Private Sector Organisations to sponsor a child or a group of children or an Institution. Such arrangements are subject to stipulations as per the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, and Rules thereof.
Conclusion
Children have been recognized by policymakers as one of the supreme national assets. India is home to more than 472 million children up to the age of 18 years and comprises almost 39 percent of the country’s population. The objective of Mission Vatsalya is to secure a healthy and happy childhood for every child in the country; foster a sensitive, supportive, and synchronized ecosystem for the development of children; assist States/UTs in delivering the mandate of the Juvenile Justice Act 2015 and achieve the SDG goals.
