The Role of CL Service for Childcare Rescue and Rehabilitation: The Case of CHILDLINE in Assam

Abstract

CHILDLINE is a non-profit national 24-h toll-free emergency telephone service provided across India for children who need care, emergency help and rehabilitation to homeless children. Children or adult, anyone can dial the CHILDLINE toll-free number ‘1098’ to access the emergency services. It uses the telephone as a medium to interact with children and counselling over by the phone to link children who need help and other rehabilitation programmes. Though CHILDLINE works for all children across the country, there are some special areas where CHILDLINE focuses more, especially the vulnerable ones which include street children; child labour; domestic girl workers; abused children in family and institutions including physically, mentally and sexually abused children; children who need emotional support and guidance, children sex workers; child trafficking; missing children; runaway children; differently able children, children in conflict with the law; mentally challenged children, HIV/AIDS-affected children; children conflicted in war; children affected by disasters; child refugee; children whose family is in crisis. CHILDLINE reaches out or helps 0–18-year-old children. In extreme emergencies, involving young adults up to 25 years of age, it provides help and care. The present study is mainly based on descriptive analysis of data collected through field-based research with a sample size of 5,290 participants. The data has been collected from the Guwahati-based organization CHILDLINE. Rescue child cases have been studied to describe the situation of how CHILDLINE work. We find that with limited resources, CHILDLINE has done an excellent job in safeguarding vulnerable children, specifically children in city areas. However, with the increase in population and child abuse cases, it finds it difficult to meet the needs of the society. Currently, it has tried to increase its boundaries to touch all the discriminated children across the country and cover 34 States/Union Territories (UTs) and 372 cities across the country.