Child-Centred Social Work in India

Journeys and the Way Forward

Murli Desai, Nilima Mehta, Murli Desai, Nilima Mehta

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000544145
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

This book presents unique semi-autobiographical narratives by leading social work educators and practitioners in India who have done innovative work in the field of child-centred social work (CSW). The practitioners narrate their career journeys and contributions to research, policy, and practice in this field, discuss innovations, achievements, and impact of the work done, and share reflections on the challenges faced, lessons learnt, and the way forward. The volume provides valuable insights into the indigenisation of CSW education and practice and offers suggestions towards developing effective CSW.

The authors draw attention towards the need for expansion of preventive service systems for children in the family, community, and school settings, as well as support to and replication of the innovative sociolegal service projects, in coordination with reforms in the justice system to ensure child rights, and human resource planning for child-centred social workers. They also propose promoting CSW education in institutions of social work education to strengthen linkages between theory, research, policy, and practice, and creating a national association for child-centred social workers to build synergy between social work practitioners and educators.

The book will be useful to policy makers, educators, students, and practitioners of social work, child development, and child rights. It will also be useful for CSW training institutions and counsellors in schools and government and voluntary organisations.

Part 1 Career journeys and reflections on child-centred social work

1 Career journey and reflections on child-centred social work

Lina Kashyap

DOI: 10.4324/9781003259558-2

My student years at TISS

In 1969, I applied to the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) for the Master’s degree programme in social work and was fortunate to be selected for the programme. At TISS, we had to choose our specialisation at the time of the application itself. Selecting Family and Child Welfare (FCW) as my specialisation was the obvious choice for me, given my affinity to children of all age groups and according to me, my natural ability to relate easily to them. I was really thrilled to be admitted to the specialisation. During the two years at TISS, I think I really grew up, and came face to face with the real world, both personally and professionally. My deep gratitude to my FCW teachers, Professor Manu Desai, and Professor Meenakshi Apte who nurtured my growth.

Beginning my professional career with child-centred social work practice

After I graduated from TISS in 1971, one of the non-government organisations (NGOs) for whom I worked for four years was the Foster Care Group of the Maharashtra State Women’s Council (MSWC). This was the start of my sustained and intense involvement in alternate care for children without adequate parental care. In the 1970s, while foster family care as a child welfare service was well established in the USA and a few western countries, it was still in a pilot project stage in India. In the 1970s when I joined the MSWC’s foster care Group, it was one of the three pilot projects funded by the Central Social Welfare Board on an experimental basis. The understanding of this service under this project was that foster family care was a child-centred, family-based, non-institutional programme that provides temporary substitute care and nurturance to children during a period of crisis in their families through placement in a foster family, until such time when these families are helped to receive them. Since this was a pilot project, there was a lot of scope for experimentation in terms of the most appropriate approach for children without adequate parental care in our Indian context so for me as a new social worker, working on this project was both exciting and challenging.

The MSWC project was administered by a committee consisting of members of the parent organisation who were very dynamic women who worked in an honorary capacity but who were totally committed to giving their time and energy to provide the most effective service to children in need. They actively guided and supported my work as a social worker on the project and treated me as a valued member of the team. A unique feature of this project was a panel of representatives from child welfare organisations and hospitals in Mumbai city. These representatives (most of whom were trained social workers), not only referred children in need of this service but also actively participated in the placement and rehabilitation process through monthly group meetings with the foster care committee.

Initially, the western process was adopted by MSWC’s foster care project. The western process was to place children in foster care with unrelated foster parents, with families who planned to adopt them, or in group homes or residential treatment centres. Foster parents were selected through public advertising and a formal application process; the selected foster parents underwent a short pre-placement training programme relating to fostering unrelated children who may exhibit psychosocial problems and to interacting with the children’s biological parents. The foster parents were provided a little financial assistance for maintaining the child though they were expected to subsidise children's care with their own funds. When I joined the project, it had already run for two years and internal discussions between the members of the Foster Care Group and the Family Service Centre (FSC) were already underway because the Foster Care Committee, the FSC as well as the natural parents were not satisfied with the outcomes. It was observed that the people who approached the project for serving as foster parents were found to be very mercenary and showed very little real interest in the child in their care. The committee realised that in India, poor families got into crisis situations when either one of the parents were chronic or terminal ill, or was a substance abuser, or was involved in anti-social activities or one parent had died or when parents were in a marital conflict or had separated/divorced or the earning parent has lost his job. It was also observed that most of the children from these families did not exhibit any severe emotional problems possibly because of the immediate but temporary support given to them by extended family members or relatives or neighbours. We strongly believed that as far as possible, every child has the right to be cared for by his or her parents, and parents have a responsibility to provide for their children’s upbringing and development. Hence, when vulnerable families get into crisis situations that make it difficult for them to provide the necessary care for their children, they should be provided assistance to be able to fully re-assume their responsibilities towards their children.

Several conclusions were drawn by the group. Though poor migrant families in Mumbai were structurally evolving into nuclear families, kinship ties were still strong. Relatives, friends, and neighbours did want to help one another in times of crisis but found themselves unable to do so for a longer time due to lack of finances. The decision was soon taken that instead of mindlessly copying western practices, we needed to contextualise and indigenise our services.

We felt the need to formalise our age-old cultural practice of care by the kin and community and place children whose families were in crisis with families known to the child, that is, with relatives, neighbours, and friends rather than with complete strangers. There were several strands to this logic. Firstly, foster parents who were related in some way to the child would feel a moral bond towards the child, so there would be less chances of the child being exploited or the money given for his/her care misused. Secondly, we are all aware that children can form multiple attachments and can also form new attachments at any age. As the prospective foster parents were known to the child, the foster child would be able to trust and develop attachment to his/her new caregivers much more easily. Hence, such a placement would be more effective and less traumatic for both the child and his/her family. Moreover, related foster parents would be sympathetic towards the biological parents and would work with us and the biological parents towards the goal of re-unification of the child with his family. Moreover, unlike in the West, generally speaking, the children needing foster care placement did not exhibit deep emotional problems.

Therefore, it was decided that instead of relying on unrelated persons for fostering children in need, we would actively try to identify relatives or neighbours or friends who were willing to help the family in need and assist these persons financially to provide temporary foster family care to the children. As the social worker on the project, I found that once such a foster parent(s) was identified, matching the biological and foster family, and getting them to adjust to each other was not difficult. This helped the children to adjust to the situation more easily; very few children exhibited psychosocial issues and placements were more stable. Moreover, in most cases, the foster parents were motivated enough to spend a little out of pocket on the foster child, since the financial assistance provided by the agency to them for the foster child’s maintenance was quite meagre. The committee recognised that children in need should be placed in foster family care for a temporary period and our goal should be children’s re-unification with their birth families. Hence a rehabilitation fund was created to alleviate stress, increase self-esteem, promote, and increase the biological family’s competence and capacity to once again nurture and protect their children. As the foster parents were not really our clients, I treated them as our valued partner which was appreciated by them. Through my regular monthly meetings with them, I was able to involve them in the assessment, service planning, and decision-making processes and get their full support for working with us and the biological parents towards the goal of re-unification.

So right from the 1970s, in India, we began implementing what is now termed in western literature as “kinship foster care” as the more appropriate approach in our context. Siblings were placed together which also helped them to stay bonded with each other. One innovation that this group and the FSC projects made as a result of joint discussions was to introduce foster day care as a way to prevent institutionalisation and disintegration of the family. The two projects jointly convinced the CSWB of the need and validity of this innovation.

Looking back, those years were very rewarding and fulfilling for me. I no doubt gained a lot of experience in working with women, children, and families, conducting 15 days out of town residential camps for foster children, conducting group meetings with foster parents, and undertaking a small research for drawing up a profile of cases of the foster care project. Along with Murli as the chief investigator, I also participated as co-investigator in a needs assessment in M Ward of greater Mumbai Corporation to identify children needing non-institutional services, which was funded by the erstwhile Ministry of Social Welfare, Government of India. The chapter writing of the report was divided between Murli and me with each of us editing the chapter the other one wrote. As I recall, this worked very well as I was very verbose and Murli would not write one word more than necessary, so I added necessary words in her chapters, and she deleted unnecessary words in my chapters. Anyhow, all these activities helped me to hone my research and practice skills, including my counselling skills and deepened my commitment even more for working for the wellbeing of children and families.

Reflecting on my four years work with the Foster Care Group, I realise how privileged I was to have been mentored so early in my professional career by a group of experienced, committed ladies (members of the MSWC) who generously gave their time and energy to this project and supported all my ideas, even some of the wild ones. From Ms Nergish Sidhwa, I learnt how to strategise and not be afraid to try out new things; from Premabahen Jeevandas, I learnt not to be afraid of numbers and how to make balance sheets; from Mrs Zarina Currimbhoy, I learnt what humility, dedication and a generosity of spirit really meant; and from Mrs Siddhida Trivedi, I learnt how to get people to work as a team and how to lead a such a team.

Doctoral studies on children with disability and their family

The small research project assessing the need for non-institutional services for children in M Ward of Mumbai city which I had participated in made me realise that the ability to conduct research should be part of the repertoire of skills that social workers should have. So, when in 1979, I gained admission into the Ph.D. programme at TISS and was offered a research fellowship which allowed me to pursue my doctoral studies three days a week, and work in the Department of Family and Child Welfare, I jumped at the opportunity.

As I began to think about a researchable area to study, I recalled that during my field practice, I had been confronted with the task of rehabilitating a very disturbed 16-year-old hearing-impaired girl. This girl though very intelligent, had spent all her school years in a special school for mentally retarded children due to her family’s disinterest in her and their lack of adequate knowledge about the disability. The thought that had haunted me ever since had been that, had intervention been made earlier in this girl’s life, her story would have been very different. I therefore decided that through my doctoral studies, I would try to gain a deeper insight into the lives of children with hearing impairment and their families with the goal of being able to draw up on the basis of the findings the possible scope of social work intervention in this field. As hearing impairment is both a sensory defect and a communication handicap, my doctoral dissertation was titled, “Communication between the Deaf Child and his Family”.

I was very fortunate to have as my Ph.D. guide Ms Mandakini Khandekar who while familiarising me with the different aspects of social research, made each stage of the dissertation an exciting and fulfilling experience. Her wide experience, clarity of perception and inimitable thoroughness helped me to combine scientific quest with the warmth of human experience as reflected in the data. To her I owe a deep gratitude for having kindled in me a lasting interest in social research. I was awarded the Ph.D. Degree in Social Work in May 1983.

My long innings at TISS in child-centred social work

My formal association with TISS spanned a period of almost four and a half decades beginning in 1969 when I entered its portals as a student and ended with my retirement on reaching the age of superannuation in 2013. For the next three years I was still associated with the Institute as an Emeritus Professor and even today I have an informal association with the Institute. I have often called it my second home.

In 1984, I joined the Department of FCW as an Assistant Professor and from 1994 up to 2006, served as Professor and Head of the same Department. Under the leadership of the new Director of TISS, Professor S. Parasuraman, the Institute underwent a major academic and administrative restructuring process. By 2006, academically, instead of teaching departments and research units, we re-structured as schools and centres within them. The erstwhile FCW department became a centre within the School of Social Work, and we named our centre as Centre for Equity for Women, Children and Families. At this point, on Professor Parasuraman’s suggestion, I and two colleagues, from the centre for Equity for Women, Children, and Families moved out of the centre in order to form a new centre which we named Centre for Disability Studies and Action (DSA). I was the chairperson of the DSA from 2006 up to 2008. From 2009 till 2013, I served as the Deputy Director of the TISS Mumbai campus.

During my long innings at the Institute and even after my formal retirement from TISS, my teaching/training, field action, research, contribution to social policy/legislation was with two broad categories of children: (i) children in general and specifically those in difficult circumstances; and (ii) children with disabilities. I would therefore like to reflect on my work with these two groups of children. As I began thinking of the work I had undertaken in this field, a lot of memories of teaching assignments, field action, research, and training manual that I had written came flooding into my mind. I will only highlight some of the major work done by me. At this point I feel that I should have been born at least ten years later as there is so much work still to be done and I feel that my life’s work is not over yet.

On joining the Department in 1984, initially, it was a little daunting to be treated as a colleague by my teacher Professor Apte, but she was so welcoming and egalitarian that I soon settled down and plunged into the activities of the department. Professor Apte invited me and colleagues who had joined the department almost at the same time with me, to review the FCW curriculum and suggest changes or modifications as she felt that some of us had come from the field, and we would review it with fresh eyes. We undertook a serious and thorough review as a result of which the curriculum was remodelled with a better balance between information, policy/analysis of issues and skill courses, and with the inclusion of the human rights paradigm within the basic structure of our child-centred courses as well as family-centred courses. Over the years I taught many courses to both the first-year and second-year students. I will highlight here only the child-centred courses where I felt I had introduced an innovation.

Teaching and training in child-centred social work

As I recall, there were two courses on children: one was on Policies and Programmes for children in India and the other was on Social Work with Children. Based on my experience in the field, I redeveloped the latter course in which I attempted to teach the “how” of working with vulnerable children in their various contexts at the developmental and therapeutic levels, based on their needs using the child rights framework. Through case records, demonstration, role plays, YouTube videos, and experiential exercises, I attempted to operationalise child-centred models of practice and enable the students to practice in the classroom, the skills associated with these models. The student feedback was that after learning from this course, they felt more confident about working with children as they had a bag full of skills and techniques to use in the field.

One of my favourite topics in this course was use of games as a medium for direct work with children. During my years in the field, I had used game playing as a therapeutic tool with the children under the foster care and sponsorship programmes and had realised the value of interactive games as powerful environments for learning not only for children’s physical and social development, but also for their intellectual and moral development as well. Therefore, in the class, I used to demonstrate how one could create a game or with a little adaptation to the rules of well-known games, these games could be used in therapeutic work with children. I also used to give students an assignment on creating or adapting a game that could be used therapeutically with children. I recalled that this was one assignment that students did not crib about. Instead, they actually enjoyed it as not only was it a creative exercise and fun, but they could also use it in their fieldwork. When the assignments came in, I used to sit in my office and play the games that the students had submitted in order to grade them, much to the amusement of my department colle...