Govt. to build more safe homes for vulnerable children

State Minister for Child Development Rosy Senanayake said that the government would create more safe homes for children who had been subjected to abuse and neglect. She was speaking at the official opening of the “Lama Piyasa”, the safe home for the vulnerable children situated at the Ragama Rehabilitation Hospital on Monday (9).

She stated that safe homes like this should use safe methods to extract evidence from abused children while counseling them and integrating them into society. She said that while the Karapitiya Hospital maintains a similar safe home the Lama Piyasa safe home is different because it provides a mechanism to record evidence from abused children using video technology and acknowledged that this facility should be available islandwide.

This special care home was launched by the Sri Lanka College of

The government to create more safe homes for children who had been subjected to abuse and neglect

Paediatricians together with PLAN Sri Lanka. This special care unit is designed to ensure that children who were victims of abuse have a special care home and convalescence facility that would provide them with comprehensive care in a secure and homely environment.

Speaking at the event, Country Director for PLAN Sri Lanka, Mr. Supriyantho, said that child abuse and neglect is a curse that had plagued children in all geographical regions, ethnic, religious and socioeconomic groups in the world. The statistics of child abuse were increasing all over the world. Children in Sri Lanka too are badly affected by this curse. Almost on a daily basis the newspapers are filled with reports of instances of child

abuse and neglect, he said.