Almost nine months after the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD) wrote to states asking them to integrate the Child Helpline (1098) with the telephonic short code 112 and to link them to district child protection units, officials said that nine states and UTs will have the integrated system by June-end.

Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Goa, Ladakh, Mizoram, Puducherry, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, and Daman & Diu are the states where the child helpline will be run by the government. Fourteen more states are going to integrate the system by July-end.

“The transition of the Child Helpline is in progress. The integrated helpline will be run by state and district functionaries in nine states and UTs from next month. The other states/UTs will also be on-boarded in a phased wise manner,” the official said.

The Ministry of Women and Child Development had earlier announced the merging of the child helpline (1098) run so far by Child helpline, with the women’s helpline and Emergency Response Support System (112), under its “One Nation, One Helpline’’ policy.

Ministry sources on Tuesday said that the nine states and UTs are just the first phase of the program and that 12 others will be operational by the end of next month. Officials said that the Centre targets the operation of this universal helpline across the country by the end of the year.

Under the Child Protection Services Scheme, which has been renamed Mission Vatsalya, the ministry was supporting the 24x7 helpline Childline 1098 service through the Childline India Foundation (CIF) and over 1,500 partner NGOs. The service was available in 568 districts, 135 railway stations, and 11 bus stands through a network of more than a thousand units.

However, the WCD ministry decided last year that the helpline would be run in coordination with state functionaries, including police and counsellors, in conjunction with the Emergency Response Support System 112 helpline of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).

“The current system, however, lacks interoperability with other services like police, fire, and ambulance which leads to loss of precious time in distress situations. Therefore, the government has taken a decision to integrate Child Helpline with ERSS-112 for all emergency cases so that immediate help can be provided to children in distress condition,” the official said.

Now, according to the new SOPs, the incoming calls to 1098 will be classified into three categories – Emergency calls, Non-Emergency calls, and Information calls, the Women and Child Development (WCD) Department official added.

Non-emergency calls may be transferred to respective child helpline (CHL) units at district child protection units and information calls will be handled at WCD CR itself or may be transferred to CHL Units of DCPUs for providing information to the caller. All calls on 1098 will land on the WCD-CR of Child helpline in respective States/UTs and emergency calls will be forwarded to ERSS-112 of MHA.

While the CIF ran the system through six centralized call centres (CCCs) in Kolkata, Gurugram, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Mumbai, ministry officials said the new system will have 36 control rooms with one in each state.

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) will run the system. NIPCCD, railways, and NIMHANS, in collaboration with state training institutes, will train the staff, officials said.

Image source: Indian Express