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As many as 4,328 children approved benefits under the PM CARES scheme for underage youths who lost one or both parents, legal guardian or adoptive parents to COVID-19 pandemic, said the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry on April 1, 2022.
“The Government of India has announced the PM CARES for Children scheme to support children who have lost both parents or surviving parent or legal guardian or adoptive parents due to Covid-19 pandemic… Total children approved for benefit under the PM Cares for Children scheme is 4328 as on March 29, 2022,” said Union Minister Bharati Pawar in the Lok Sabha.
The latest figure is a big improvement from last year’s government claim of 645 children, who lost both their parents to Covid-19 between April and May 2021. Still it falls woefully short of the information in the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) Supreme Court affidavit that said 30,071 children lost one or both parents or were abandoned by June 5, 2021. Possibly, the Ministry did not include abandoned children for this question regarding deceased parents by MP M.P Abdussamad Samadani.
On June 30, 2021, the Supreme Court directed the Centre to pay an ex-gratia amount of ₹ 50,000 per deceased person, whose cause of death is certified as a result of Covid-19. This is as per the National Disaster Management Authority’s (NDMA) ‘Guidelines to provide for ex-gratia assistance to kin of the deceased by COVID-19’.
However, while Pawar provided the latest number of orphaned children, she did not answer Samadani’s question about the obstacles in making the compensation available to children due to unsound and impractical conditions imposed in the process of application.
Mental health of children
Meanwhile, Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi asked Union Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani about the impact of the pandemic and lockdowns on the mental health of children. She answered that the Centre set up a 24×7 helpline to provide “psycho-social support” from mental health professionals to the entire affected population. The public was divided into different target groups such as children, adults, elderly, women and healthcare workers.
iii. Issuance and dissemination of detailed guidelines by the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru- „‟Mental Health in the times of COVID-19 Pandemic – Guidance for General Medical and Specialized Mental Health Care Settings‟‟.
Further, she said the Ministry collaborated with the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) to form a National Initiative & Integrated Resource Centre for Child Protection, Mental Health, and Psychosocial Care named “SAMVAD”. The centre works on four key areas of mental health, care and protection, education, policy and law.
The service works at the community-level through panchayat raj Institutions, under the Mission Vatsalya Convergence framework, and trains employees on the vulnerability and risk issues in child protection, as created by the pandemic. The scheme also aims to include anganwadi workers.
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