Share
Rescuing Railway Children
Reuniting Families from India's Railway Platforms
First Edition
- Malcolm Harper - Independent Consultant
- Lalitha Iyer - Independent Researcher, Social Consultant
November 2013 | 252 pages | SAGE Publications Pvt. Ltd
Rescuing Railway Children focuses on runaway children in India who have used trains to take them away from home, and who live on railway station platforms and in trains. It presents the issues and challenges of reaching out to these ‘railway children’, particularly through the experiences of Sathi, an NGO based in Bangalore. This organisation has chosen to work with children on railway platforms across India with the intention of reuniting them with families wherever possible.
The book deals with platform outreach and focuses on shelters close to the stations. The reuniting process is examined from a practical as well as a child-rights perspective. It expands the horizons of analysis by presenting the system prevailing in the UK as a counterpoint, thus highlighting the concerns and current thinking on institutional care and fostering at an international level.
The book deals with platform outreach and focuses on shelters close to the stations. The reuniting process is examined from a practical as well as a child-rights perspective. It expands the horizons of analysis by presenting the system prevailing in the UK as a counterpoint, thus highlighting the concerns and current thinking on institutional care and fostering at an international level.
Foreword Pramod Kulkarni
India’s Railway Children
Conventions and Policies Versus Practice and Reality
Platform Presence
At the Shelter
Protection for Children in Need
A Re-Integration Camp
Homecoming
Spreading the Lessons of Experience
Who Really Knows a Child’s Need?
Care and Protection Services for Children in the UK (by Kate Bulman)
The Future-Railway Children in the Next Twenty Years
Annexure: The Sathi Story and Civil Society Response to Children’s Needs
On References and Sources
Index
The book delves into the research it has undertaken over the years to try and evolve the best ways to handle runaway children and find a future for them...the book is sprinkled with real life stories that make the book much more poignant...the strength of the book is to be able to look at processes objectively in order to evolve better practices.
This book presents the issues and challenges of reaching out the ‘railway children’…. This book is different. It includes a number of stories, most with sad beginnings and some with happy ending…the purpose of the stories is to show how complex the problem can be, and demonstrate the failures and successes of those who try to deal with it.