Need to Review and Correct the research paper according to my professor requirements 

Government Safety Plan For Street Children

Varudhini Madugula, 1712376

University Canada West

Professor: Mr. Abera Demeke

RSCH 600 & Research Methodologies and Inquiry

11th December 2018

Introduction

The search by urban authorities for a solution to the menace of street children is an egregious example of a longstanding challenge founded on lack of political goodwill. Several attempts have been made toward the end of eradicating the street children problem. However, there has been little success mainly because these policies are often reactionary, and often fails to adress the root cause of the issue. Societal policies that do not take into cognizance a multifacted approach to the problem of street children are inevitable dead on arrival.

Hyderabad is one of the most urbanized megacity and metropolitan city in India, Asia. It is the capital of the newly formed state of Telangana. This city has almost 3,943,323 inhabitants (Census of India, 2011) with a population of 7.75 million, which makes it the fourth, most popular and sixth most popular urban center in India (Hyderabad Population, 2018).It is one of the places which provides comforts and convenient for any immigrant from any place. According to Census 2011, 24% of immigrants come from rural or other parts of the country in quest of better opportunities to see their best future. The place provides better education, the variety of job opportunities to both literate and illiterate. The problem of poverty has led to the proliferation of street children. The people who live in the slums bring up their children on the footpath and make hence they end up street children. The government seems to be doing very little to ameliorate their situation. This paper examines the impact of policies and plans on street children. It focuses on existing policies to help demystify and arrive at a holistic solution. The quantitative approach employed by this proposal is justified by the need to build replicable and empirical models.

Problem statement

Hyderabad is one of the largest and most beautiful parts of the country of India with lots of opportunities and comforts. However latest trends indicates an increase in the number of street children. The city provides a good premise for this proposal because it is a classic example of how lack of political and legislative goodwill, premises on the pure ideals of market forces can expose the weaknesses of lack of welfare services. The city human labour landscape is characterised by both skilled and non-skilled labour. While this is the case, the majority of the population leaves below the poverty line.

In addition, a problem of inequality continues to permeate the city. The gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen and the dire shortage of legislation that attempts to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor is a critical reality. The consequences of this menace are a good number of the population leaving in slums under deplorable conditions. It is also hard to feed their families leave alone think of access to social amenities such as proper sanitation. The overall results of all this social and economic constructs is several postnatal deaths, the rise of street families, crime and street children ending up in childhood delinquency.

The problem is disheartening to the level that street children are usually abandoned on the streets immediately after delivery because the mothers have no idea how to cater for them. While this continues to characterise lives in the slums, the other half of the city continues to thrive and live exceedingly rich and luxurious lifestyle. This raises serious concerns about sustainability of the city. There is need to address the menace before it blows out of proportion yet it seems, currently the state’s regime is ineptly unconcerned, and the existing policies are discriminative, and antithetical to the course. There is only sporadic assistance from non-governmental organization, but this is not enough because these NGOs are locally funded and hence their assistance is limited. The purpose of the research is to draw the attention of the common problems facing street children in Hyderabad. It includes disheartening facts of mistreatment by the community, abandonment by the government and the misdirected agenda of non-governmental organizations.

A recent survey conducted by NGO’s “Save the children” found out that the number of street children in the state is approximately 28,560 (Nation, 2016). These children were classified into three groups; Street children with no homes at all, and choose to stay on the streets with family, children who work on the streets and returns to families, and children living without a family.

Research Questions

In order to understand the current situation of the street children and the programs that fully contribute to making them potentially strong and meaningfully to society, the below are few guiding questions.

Does the government ensure the health problem of street children to live a normal life?

2. What is the government policy for street children safety in terms of housing and food?

3. Does the governmental policies help street children to have the right to complain towards any unethical behavior that may cause by other people?

4. What is the government responsibilities towards street children sexual harassment?

Research Objectives

1. To identify the government procedures towards street children to ensure their level of safety in different concepts such as shelter, food and health

2. To search about the effective way of implementing government policies for street children’s safety

3. To identify whether the government policies are practical for the lives of street children

4. To recognise any further activities that government can produce to boost the level of living for street children

Street children are used to the brutal activities of the police, illegal activities and are sometimes killed as well by the same people who should protect them. As the police by default, treat these children as a wanderer and criminals. At an average girl street children becomes pregnant very early and hence the vicious cycle of street children witnessed in the state. Boys end up joining gangs, engaging in substance abuse and becoming the perpetrators of underage pregnancy to their fellow street girls. The poverty trap is considerably perplexing.

It is surprising that very little has been done at governmental level to address such as a serious violation of human rights. It is the role of the government to ensure that every child has access to necessity, education and protection. The sacrosanct doctrines of Human Rights is established and founded on the volumes of law of India, which raises serious societal concern why these laws have not been used to resolve the menace. It is hence arguable from the perspective that the lack of policies and plans for addressing the street children menace stem from the failure to bridge the gap between law and practice, founded entirely on bad political leadership.

Literature review

The main causes for the escalation of population of street children is due to the carelessness of parents, poverty, economic instabilities, mental abuse, lack of values, and physical torture of the third person. Children in the street have reasons behind their plight. A few children were cheated by the promises of liberty. Majority of the street children lacks structured and functional families that they can call home.(Nassir & Khalid, 2015).

The contribution of poverty and failure of family structures has been inspected in several literatures. There is agreement among several scholars that these factors are the main causes of the street children menace (Sharma, 2011). There has also been concrete effort to examine the characteristics and emotional constructs of street children. The literatures identify several personalities, but none of the literature has ever attempted that there is anything wrong with the child. The scholars agrees that it is only possible to understand street children through the lenses of a failed society.(Nasir & Khalid, 2015).

Additional literature has also focussed on demographics and prevalence of street children (Salman, 2015). These serves as important sources of information for hard data that should be harnessed toward theory building. The reports also seem to suggest there is an economic and geographical context with the problem of street children. This is invaluable revelation because it could be utilized to justify the course that the functional failure by the society is to blame for the menace. The traditional perspective have always laid the burden on children and their mothers, in a logical model that represents the vestiges of a patriarchal society that refuses to die.

Unicef categories street children into several types namely “on the street” and “off the street. The former category of street children are those who do not have a home to stay for different reasons, this is because they lack proper parental care or control. As a result, they turn into street beggars or mischievous children or sometimes criminals (Child Line, 2018). This is because the children lack psychological support from the family institution.

The next categories of children are the most helpless because they are the victims of negligence. As a result, they will be engaged in theft, prostitution for their survival. These children ran away from the home for different reasons. Some reasons may include parent’s addiction to alcohol, poverty, unemployment or may be emotional abuse such as insults. Few leave home due to addicted to the beauty of modern cities and expect to be rich if they come out of their home (Child Line, 2018).

Street children population in terms of Percentage

When compared to girls, boys are more in number. It is notable that girls are rarely found on the road hence it is hard to trace them. The major problem facing street girl children is sexual abuse. (Bal, Mitra, Mallick, Chakraborti, & Sarkar, (2010). (Kricheff, 2007; Senanayake, Ramasinghe, & Balasuriya, 1998; Tantoco, 1993; Tyler, 2004).

Calculating the number of street children according to age is difficult but it reveals that 40% of street children are 11- 15 years of age, 33% lies in the age group of 10. A number of surveys indicated that almost 89.8 % of the children reside on the street with their family (Child Line, 2018).

Only a few shelters are available for these children, few manage to stay in constructing buildings or at a place where they work, where few live in space. 50% of them are self-employed as office boys, tea boy, pick-pocketers, robbers, delivery boys for almost 10-13 hours per day (Child Line, 2018). Working on the roads and being exposed to environmental conditions leads to health problems and unhygienic conditions

While the authorities often harass the children, they do not report these encounters because of fear. They also face problems from their own family, employers and many. Society forgets that they have a right to play and this right is disappeared in the real world, as there are no fun facilities provided for them. They only get drugs, alcohol, gambling etc (Child Line, 2018).

UNICEF in the year 2003 estimated that there would be at least 100 million street children by the fall of the decade. (Child Line, 2018). However latest statistics reveals the problem has grown out of proportion. The number has skyrocketed and hence the state under focus in this study is only reflective of worrying trends worldwide. The street children more also do not enrol in the schools due to school high amount of school fees (Shephard, 2014). The united millennial sustainability goals clearly exemplifies that all children should be provided with education (United Nations, 1989).

The children’s’ parents have no idea of education and its importance and instead sends children to streets to beg (Aderinto, 2000. Malcolm, 2000) The children are forced to substance abuse to forgot their pain when injured, to keep themselves awake while doing hard jobs or to avoid hunger, and to forgot emotional pain (singh, 2011). Alcohol, colanut, and tobacco are the most commonly abused drug by the street children (Morakinzi, & Odejide, 2003).

Street children can be conceptualised as youngsters chipping away at the road (on the street), children living in the street (of the road), and children from street families abandoned ( Parveen, 2014). Information gathered from existing literatures reveals out of 25755 street children in India, 37.55 percent work daytime in the city and come back to their home at night; 11.10 percent were living in the street entirely. Among those street children 38.15 percent live with their family, and 11.96 percent live alone or with their companions. .

Government and some social service programmes started a program for the street children named Integrated Program for Street Children (IPSC). The main aim of the IPSC program is to provide proper nutrition, rehabilitation centres for the children who are addicted to drugs, and counselling for the children (Child line, 2018). This is inadequate because it simplifies the issue with a reactive approach.

IPSC focuses on the following:

• Establishing educational programs.

• Counselling, guidelines, rehabilitation centres

• Re-joining with the family

• Providing 24 hours shelter and a homestay

• Conducting programs like placement for jobs, enrolment in school, health services

• Make them understand that they have the right to study and the right to play.

Map to show the detailed information and the connection between Government policies and street children

Research Methodologies

Research approach

Research is defined as a process through which we understand and analyze data about a specific subject. It is a voyage from the unknown to the unknown The methodology is a procedure through which we gain, process and evaluate data. Prior to this research, I had read few articles, journals and other literature reviews regading this topic itself. The research that I will conduct is a mixed type of research where I will be gainng more information about the implementation of government policies on poor children area.

Study Design

As discussed in the previous literature review, my research focuses on studying the policies that the government has introduced to the children living on the streets. The study will focus on evaluating whether the government has implemented the services or not by collecting data from the children living on the roads.

As it is an indirect research, I will involve specific question that will be directly asked to the children ( Fabrigar, & Wegener, 2012). This would be provided with a questionnaire through which specific question will gather enough data regarding this issue.

Research questions can be answered in different ways using different methods. In order to reflect any of the methods, there are many factors to be considered depending upon specific research objectives. As per my research topic, I will be formulating a Questionnaire, which helps to collect the information without any bias, and it is relatively cheap and less time-consuming.

Validity and Reliability

Data validity and reliability is invaluable while conducting research. As the information or the data collected is accurate then if the research is conducted repeatedly then the result will be the same. Data is valid and reliable if the results are replicable using a similar model of research.

For this research, we consider 150 street children from 10 significant areas like Gachibowli, L.b. Nagar, Sanath Nagar, Dislsukhnagar, Secunderabad, Uppal, Mehdipatnam, Kukatpally, Namapally, and Ameerpet.

Sample selection criteria

1. 8-15 years age children are my research target.

2. Children who have lived in the streets within the last five years.

3. Children living in streets during the time of research.

The study took the considerations of gender and age while selecting the sample.

• Gender: Street children gender helps to understand the policies the government should introduce to save the situation

• Age: Selected age is averse to the situation and can express them on the matter.

• Circumstances: Circumstances are the primary subject in any children lives, this plays a vital role in dragging the children to roads and give them the name tag “Street Children.”

The sampling strategy employed for this study is snowball technique. This is a sampling strategy where the children would refer other children who are experiencing similar fate. As a result, the sample size is equally limited by this factor. The projected sample size was 120 children. This number however is quite representative noting that the primary intent of this research was to capture information such as emotions which cannot be arrived at through pure statistical research approaches.

Ethical Issues

The relevant permits were obtained prior to conducting this research. The children were also informed that the research was being conducted for pure academic reasons and the guarantors if any were shown letter of authorization from the institution. Data collected from the research was to be treated confidentially and discarded three years after the research in line with the university guidelines. The participants were motivated with lunch money noting the sensitivity of their conditions. The participant would not be referred with their real names during and while analysing data.

Participants

Participants are an essential portion of the research. Everyone has different personality and attitudes due to which the response is different. The participants involved in my research would be children living on the street of age eight years to 15 years. It is because the study focuses on children.

The participant should be explained how the data for the research will be used. Participation is also voluntary. The participant has all the right to leave or discontinue the questionnaire at any given moment if they do not want to.

The sampling method in my research would be nonprobability-sampling method namely snow ball techniques, but focusing on students living on the streets. Sampling frame would include interviewing as many street children as possible.

Primary data alone cannot give us enough information, which is required for the research; secondary data is collected from individual articles, journals. In this paper, an orderly attempt has been made to survey the current experimental writing from nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America through the perspective of meta-examination.. Academic composed, distributed reports in English were looked from Google Scholar and file (like JSTOR). The keywords used were phrases like "street children"; "homeless"; "youngsters on, of, relinquished in the city"; and "social mediation" were normally utilized. For the secondary data, I have researched and obtained forty different sources of data on the same subject. The different consists of journals, articles and previously researched paper by researchers.

Inclusion and exclusion of studies were performed by some predetermined criterion in the studies:

• age of the children being below 18.

• appropriate representation of sample size, which provides information on gender.

• composition, educational background, livelihood sources, type of street stay, and average age.

• the studies written and published in English language.

• the study providing amenable data.

• the study employing quantitative or mixed research method (Kopaka, 2010).

I choose to sample from a group of street children from the age group of 8yrs to 15yrs from the central part of Hyderabad. As I felt Hyderabad is the most convenient place for me to research as it is the fastest growing place. However, the city is urbanized and fastest, growing place the number of street children is quite repeatedly increasing.

The Materials

The material used to gather the information is the Questionnaire. This poll contains a specific measure of inquiries which are straight and coordinated to one-sided or expected answers. Rather, the inquiries concentrated for the most part on the administration arrangements, they intercede, approaches, wellbeing measures are achieving the kids and is there any improvement in their lives. The inquiries contain choices that lead them to react with no wavering and unbias.

Developing a questionnaire is not an easy task that will take more time in order to collect accurate data. As a excellent research, report that is generated can be based on inadequate data collected. As a result, the data that collected is not relevant leads to waste of time, money and energy and gives discredit to the researcher. As the questionnaires can be either direct questions or indirect questions, it has options saying yes or no, agree or disagree or some topic related options. It is some interview with formal or informal kind of questions to get the answers. The formal form of questionnaire or interview is intrusive and is either acceptable or unacceptable (Gillham, 2008).

The advantages of the questionnaire are

• The information collected is direct from the participants

• The data is accurate

• Time and money saving

• Can provide data to analysis and hypothesis testing

• Analysis of answers to closed questions is straightforward

• It is tidy and makes researchers use to analyze

• The questions are visible, and the answers can be predicted in advance.

Disadvantages

• Misunderstanding cannot be corrected

• Questionnaire formed is often poor

• Wording the question can have a significant impact on the answers

• Seeks information just by seeking questions.

Constructions of questionnaire

The questionnaire can be formed using structured or unstructured questions. Most of the structured questionnaires are closed questions. The same question can be asked in different ways which give the opposite to give freedom to express his opinion is which movie would you like to go? Then the participant comes up with the answers writing in the blank. However, when we are trying to collect the opinion, beliefs or judgment, then the small range of answers are most likely to appear.

The questionnaire consists of two types of questions. Category questions and rating questions

All questions must be well designed, simple and clear questions must be used as it is essential for the self-completion questionnaire. The survey should be relevant and simple. The questions that are framed must have a meaningful order and should relate to the topic and make sense. Moreover, it should be fair questions and should be readily understood by the participants. If there are any different sections, then add heading and labels to the columns while shooting any question, make sure there is no splitting in the questions or answers. The questions must not be too long and should make sure no sensitive questions are asked.

Cost and Plan

Appendix

Questionnaire

Category Questions

1. What is your name? ­­____________

2. Age

• <8

• 8-12

• 13-15

• >18

1. Do you study?

• Yes

• No

1. Do you work?

• Yes

• No

1. Are you aware of the government benefits for children?

• Yes

• No

1. Are you aware of the food services provided by the government?

• Yes

• No

1. If Yes, how often do you get food? _______

2. Where do you live?

• • House

  • Rent

  • Government Shelters

  • Street

  • Others

1. Are you provided with the health services from the governemnt?

• • Yes

  • No

1. Do you know that government provides some safety measures to you?

• Yes

• No

1. If yes, do you get the safety measures from them?

• Yes

• No

The cost incurred to do this research is quite low when compared to different approaches, it is collecting the information with few simple questions without making them feel insecure and bad. This research can is done with the NGO member so that we can assure the strret childen faces no problem furthur.

Ratings

Very Important Important Not important Not very important Least Important

Food by government □ □ □ □ □

Medical Facilities □ □ □ □ □

Shelters □ □ □ □ □

Education Services □ □ □ □ □

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