Delhi’s women and child development department has drafted guidelines for Children in Street Situations, or CiSS, seeking to replace fragmented responses to children begging, working or living around the capital’s traffic signals, markets and roads with a coordinated system of identification, rescue, protection, rehabilitation and reintegration. The proposal is significant not simply because it sets out another rescue protocol, but because it treats the presence of children on the street as an urban governance problem involving schooling, documentation, migration, shelter, family poverty, substance use and exposure to exploitation.
The draft emerged after a meeting attended by more than 150 representatives from government departments, Delhi Police, non-government organisations, academic institutions and civil society groups. Delhi WCD secretary Dr Rashmi Singh reiterated the department’s commitment to protecting children from begging and exploitation while ensuring safety, dignity, education and rehabilitation. SM Ali, deputy director of the child protection and development unit, described the framework as an attempt to create a coordinated, child-centric mechanism with clear responsibilities for different stakeholders.
That coordination is the central challenge. Children visible at traffic signals are often treated as an enforcement issue or as a matter for periodic drives. The guidelines instead recognise that children encountered in public spaces may belong to different groups and face different risks. Category 1 covers children living on the streets without parental or family support. Category 2 includes children who spend the day begging, rag-picking or selling goods but return to families in nearby settlements at night. Category 3 covers children living on the streets with their families, including migrant families engaged in construction, casual labour or rag-picking.
This classification matters because a uniform response can produce poor outcomes. A child living alone on the street may require immediate protection, family tracing and a care plan. A child returning to a family each night may need school access, household support and protection from hazardous work. A migrant family living in an informal settlement may require documentation, shelter and welfare access alongside any intervention involving the child. The draft guidelines place all these situations within the wider legal category of Children in Need of Care and Protection under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015.
The source report identifies several conditions that make the problem difficult to address through rescue alone. Many surveyed children have never attended school, with the situation worsening after Covid, according to the department’s concerns recorded in the report. Substance use, including inhalants such as correction fluid and adhesives as well as tobacco, is prevalent among some children. Children also face risks of sexual exploitation, trafficking and child labour. Missing birth certificates, Aadhaar and ration cards can prevent children and families from accessing public schemes, while Delhi’s large seasonal and permanent migrant population makes it harder to maintain contact and establish eligibility.
Shelter is another point where child protection intersects with the city’s physical infrastructure. Access to Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board permanent and temporary night shelters remains inconsistent, according to the report. A child protection framework that does not connect outreach teams to safe, usable and accessible shelter will struggle to provide continuity after a rescue. The guidelines therefore place shelter, food, hygiene, first aid and referrals within the operational response, rather than treating them as separate welfare concerns.
The proposed institutional arrangement begins with district-level mapping of hotspots and continuous field-based identification. This is a departure from relying only on one-time surveys. District Child Protection Units are expected to maintain databases recording a child’s location, age, gender, vulnerability, interventions and restoration status. Universities, including the Delhi School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Jamia Millia Islamia, may support surveys and research subject to ethical approval.
The emphasis on mapping reflects the fact that street situations are mobile. Children and families may move between traffic intersections, markets, construction sites, shelters and informal settlements. A database can help authorities track interventions, but its value will depend on the quality of fieldwork, data protection and the ability of departments to update records when families move. The material supplied for this report does not establish how the proposed database will be governed, shared or audited, leaving implementation details unresolved.
Each district is expected to have an outreach team led by the district magistrate and facilitated by the District Child Protection Unit. Teams would conduct regular outreach, counselling, rescue and referrals, with at least one special night drive every month. The proposed rescue kit includes food, water, clothing, hygiene items, first aid, information about Child Helpline 1098 and details of nearby shelters. These provisions indicate an effort to make the first contact less dependent on coercive removal and more focused on immediate safety and trust.
The draft also sets out a sequence of actions after rescue. A child is to receive immediate safety and basic support and be produced before the Child Welfare Committee within 24 hours. Family tracing and an individual care plan are to be undertaken within seven days. A social investigation report, school admission, the start of skill training or reintegration is expected within 15 days. These timelines create an administrative chain that can be monitored, although the report does not provide staffing levels, funding allocations or performance indicators for meeting them.
The proposal’s stated preference for family strengthening over institutionalisation is important. The guidelines identify ration cards, Aadhaar camps, Pradhan Mantri Awas support, Jan Dhan accounts, Mission Vatsalya sponsorship, Right to Education admissions, Ayushman Bharat and employment assistance as possible routes for stabilising vulnerable households. For children whose street presence is linked to poverty or family distress, this approach treats welfare access as part of child protection. It also recognises that removing a child without addressing household insecurity may leave the underlying conditions unchanged.
At the same time, family-based reintegration cannot be treated as automatically safe. The report states that where exploitation, coercion or trafficking by parents or guardians is established, legal action will be taken while safeguarding the child’s best interests. This creates a distinction between families requiring support and situations where the family itself is a source of danger. The success of the framework will depend on whether field teams can make that distinction through reliable social investigation rather than through assumptions based on appearance, occupation or migration status.
The inclusion of sports and physical activities further broadens the proposal beyond rescue and paperwork. The guidelines present these activities as a way to build confidence, discipline, teamwork and social inclusion while reducing exposure to substance abuse, exploitation and violence. Their role, however, is supplementary. The core requirements remain stable shelter, school access, health and counselling services, documentation, family support and protection from trafficking and labour exploitation.
The draft has received support from civil society organisations. Sanjay Gupta, director of Chetna NGO, welcomed the move and said his organisation had been seeking such guidelines for nearly two decades. His comment points to a long-standing institutional gap: organisations working with children in street situations may have experience and local knowledge, but their role can remain dependent on individual drives or informal coordination. A formal framework could clarify responsibilities, referrals and follow-up, provided that non-government groups are included in implementation rather than only consultation.
The immediate policy signal from Delhi is therefore a shift from visibility to case management. Traffic signals make street-connected children visible, but visibility does not reveal whether a child is abandoned, working with family, being coerced, using substances, missing school or facing trafficking. The proposed categories, district databases, outreach teams and timelines attempt to convert a recurring public scene into a series of identifiable protection needs.
What remains uncertain is how the draft will become an operational and accountable programme. The supplied report does not specify when the guidelines will be notified, what budget will support them, how many outreach workers each district will receive, or how outcomes will be measured. It also does not establish how shelter capacity, school admissions, health services and documentation camps will be coordinated in practice. These questions will determine whether the framework becomes a durable citywide system or another set of procedures activated during special drives.
For now, the evidence supports a clear conclusion: Delhi’s street-children challenge cannot be addressed through rescue alone. The proposed guidelines connect child protection to the city’s systems of housing, migration, education, shelter, welfare delivery and public-space governance. Their next test will be implementation—district by district, case by case, and with enough continuity to ensure that a child’s removal from a traffic signal is followed by safety, education and a viable route away from the street.
