Covid-19, like other pandemics, has been associated with death and various challenges to the medical infrastructure. But beyond mortality, pandemics inflict severe collateral damage. This pandemic has left many left orphaned and, hence, vulnerable to such adverse consequences as poverty, abuse, and institutionalization. There are many who want to contribute for their better upbringing. Most people believe that it will give these children a shot at a better life than they can get from impoverished surviving relatives. However, sometimes even well-intentioned initiatives may go wrong. At the same time there is a tendency that some bad intentioned people try to take advantage of the plight of these children. It is here that the government must ensure balance and make certain that the interests and rights of such children are secured. With the opening of schools now, the government must ensure that these orphans get better education.
Working with bereaved children is not merely about counting and recording cases or providing compensation. Stipends and financial packages are critical to ensure children’s long-term security but the administration has to simultaneously invest in human resources and systems necessary to ensure that the children are not exploited with an eye on the incentives provided to Covid-orphansthere is also need to ensure each child must also be provided mental health support. The unresolved trauma and grief of such magnitude can increase the chances of producing a broken generation and the government must ensure all possible help. Children often take their emotional cues from the key adults in their lives, so it’s important that there is someone caring to listen to their concerns, speak kindly and be reassuring.
The Jammu and Kashmir government has already announced that it will provide special scholarships to children who lost their parents due to coronavirus. It also, in a right decision, has announced to provide life-long pension to the families who have lost a lone-bread earner to the virus. The government should do as much as possible to help the traumatised children and place them in institutional care, if kinship care is not available. As suggested by Lancet, the government should have a permanent fund for the orphaned children and the establishment of an administrative set-up to cater specifically to the issues faced by them.
