The National Child Protection Authority (NCPA) said that the lack of required facilities and institutional support have intensified the issues persisting in the country’s probation and child-care sector.

Speaking to The Daily Morning yesterday (7), the NCPA Chairman Udayakumara Amarasinghe said that some of the probation and child-care centres do not have the minimum facilities, and that therefore, many children have started fleeing such centres.

He said this when he was queried about the reasons identified for children to leave probation and child-care centres against the backdrop of many parties calling for measures to uplift the standards of child-care institutions.

Speaking further, Amarasinghe stated that this problem cannot be resolved only by improving the infrastructure in those places, and that it needs a proper initiative to uplift both the human and physical resources in order to achieve a great success in this issue. He noted that most of the time, there is no positive social opinion regarding the country’s probation and child-care centres, especially about the Probation Department. Therefore, that kind of image would not encourage the public support in this exercise and that hence public institutions should initiate a programme to build up the image of such institutions which are under the purview of the Government.

He said that children who are sent to these probation and child-care centres should be given special attention and affection, and that therefore, the people who are closely working with such children should be given a proper education on how to deal with them and the issues related to their mentality. “Sometimes, there are external reasons which cannot be controlled. But, most of the issues can be controlled if those people and the relevant institutions get the required support, not only money, but especially community support,” he said.