BENGALURU: Social audit of shelter homes located in Karnataka will begin soon. A committee meeting held on Saturday has zeroed in on nearly 1,100 institutions across the state. The audit instructions was given by the Supreme Court after many girls residing in a shelter home in Bihar were put to mental, physical and sexual exploitation.
A member of the Child Welfare Committee said, “The meeting was held with the concerned departments and we will start phase 1 of the auditing as soon as possible.”The state government, along with Department of Women and Child Welfare, KSCPCR and private agencies like Enfold and Department of health and family welfare hold another meeting to discuss on the modalities and formulate tools to work with the coordinators.
“For phase 1 we have identified children related to government institutions, government-funded institutions and other private institutions. We will initially take record of all children’s homes and then move to women shelters,” she said.
The committee will meet again on Wednesday to discuss the matter further. The CWC had requested Department of Health and family welfare also to join as they were not present on Saturday.“We have requested a few Psychiatrists from Nimhans and other doctors to be part of the meeting. Saturday, for some reason, they could not make it. We will meet again,” a member of the CWC explained.
Speaking to The New Indian Express, Jayamala, Minister for Women and Child Development said, “The meeting of committees has been helpful in laying out the plan to carry out audits. Nearly 1,100 institutions have been identified across the state. The tools formulated to do the audit will be in both the format of questionnaire and a narrative.”