The Child in Need of Care and Protection

In one line

This chapter is the whole life of a case about a child who has done nothing wrong: who may bring him, who must report him, how he is inquired into, and what may be ordered.

In exam wording: sections 31 to 38 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 provide for the production of a child in need of care and protection before the Committee, mandatory reporting and the offence of non-reporting, surrender, the inquiry, the orders the Committee may pass, and the declaration that a child is legally free for adoption.

Why the law has this at all

A child in conflict with law arrives in the system because the police bring him. A child in need of care and protection may arrive by no route at all, because nobody has an obvious duty to notice him.

So section 31 makes the door as wide as it can. Seven classes of person may produce such a child, and the list runs from a police officer to a nurse, to a public spirited citizen, and, remarkably, to the child himself.

But a wide door is not enough, because the commonest case is the child found abandoned in a hospital or on a street by somebody who simply keeps him, or passes him on privately, meaning well. That is how children disappear into unregulated arrangements and, at worst, into trafficking. Section 32 therefore makes reporting compulsory, section 33 makes failure an offence, and section 34 fixes the penalty.

And behind the whole chapter runs an idea that shows most clearly in sections 35 and 38: the family gets every chance first. Surrendering parents are given two months to reconsider; the Committee must make all efforts to trace the parents of an orphan or abandoned child; and no first information report may be registered against a biological parent during that inquiry, because a mother who fears prosecution will not come forward.

Some words this chapter uses

Surrender deed is the document executed before the Committee by a parent or guardian relinquishing a child.

Legally free for adoption is the declaration under section 38, which is what makes adoption possible.

Specialised Adoption Agency is defined in section 2(57); note that below six years of age it is the default placement.

Section 31: who may produce the child

Sub-section (1). Any child in need of care and protection may be produced before the Committee by:

(i) any police officer, special juvenile police unit, designated Child Welfare Police Officer, officer of the District Child Protection Unit, or inspector appointed under any labour law; (ii) any public servant; (iii) Childline Services, or any voluntary or non-governmental organisation or agency recognised by the State Government; (iv) a Child Welfare Officer or probation officer; (v) any social worker or public spirited citizen; (vi) by the child himself; or (vii) any nurse, doctor or management of a nursing home, hospital or maternity home.