The experience of HCHW emphasizes that the period of stay of a child on streets is crucial and an influencing factor in the process of rehabilitation. It has been observed time and again that longer the child stays on streets the more difficult and delayed is the process of rehabilitation. Thus, it is important to reach out to a greater number of children living on streets.

The street is not the safe place to reside for any child as these street elements are on the look out for opportunities to fulfill their needs and desires. More important is to reach out to the new entrants on streets, who are not trapped as yet by the other street elements or not exposed and adapted to street culture. At the juncture, if the child is catered with proper care, the process of rehabilitation becomes easier, moreover the child at this stage is found to be emotional and strongly attached with family, relatives and community at large.

Contact Points, a sub Program is exclusively designed to help children who have left their homes and land at railway stations or live on streets. The basic concept of this Program is to capture the street children at the grassroots level and work with them using different techniques and method like counseling, casework, groups work etc. Our field staff called as street educators are deputed to certain locales of the city, which are the hubs of these street children to reside. The areas chalked out are the major railway stations, bus stands, parks, garden etc.

Here our staff members use rapport building techniques to gain the trust and confidence of the street children. This process is followed by gradual counseling to estimate the interest of the child and his future outlook. As per the response received, the staff would initiate further action.

The child may show interest in joining back his family, in which case he is directly repatriated with the help of our staff. Some children may not want to immediately re-join their family but prefer to become economically stable and then join family. Whatever may be the decision of the child, we ensure that he willingly pursues it. In the course of time the child may want to continue his education or pursue other courses of his interest therefore joins our shelter home, where he undergoes rehabilitation. The children at the Contact point are ensured recreational activities, healthcare and non-formal education. Also regular outings, health camps, educational awareness camps and other social development programmes are organized for these children.

Children living on streets are basically mobile in nature, yet the success of any Program concerning them depends upon the reach out and retention of children for a longer period of time. A lot of efforts and strategies are required in doing so. This, in order to strengthen the work with children living on streets and reach out to a large number of children and offer them quality services more so in terms of results. We work with the concept of the Drop-in-center. Located closer to the railway stations, Drop-in-center basically serves as a shelter facility available to the children during the day. As it is known these children are deprived of basic amenities such as water for drinking, bathing, toilets, shelter etc. Due to this, the health and hygiene of these children is relatively poor.

The plight of these children seems worse during the monsoon and summer season as they cannot get proper place to protect themselves with heavy rainfall and high temperature levels respectively. The Drop-in-center caters to such facilities as drinking water, toilets, recreational facilities such as indoor games, television etc. It also facilitates better rapport building and interaction with these children thus enabling counseling, guidance, non-formal education, repatriation, referrals for vocational training, job placement, self employment etc.

It was an established notion that these children do not need home as they had already left their homes and further advocated for the proper kind of home that addressees to the needs of the children, their rights as well as that provides them an enabling environment to grow develop into respectable citizens.

Thus, HCHW started its first Child Development Center in the year 1993. Child Development Centers serves as an immediate alternative towards extending care, protection and residential rehabilitation services.

Our Child Development Centers work round the clock to serve the children staying with us. The three CDC's work towards the total rehabilitation of the children in terms of physical, mental, psychological and behavioral rehabilitation. One of the CDC called Second Home is exclusively for children who are pursuing their formal education in regular schools.

At the CDC's the children are gradually trained to incorporate the day-to-day activities methodically, thus enabling them to cultivate socially acceptable equates and behavior. Apart from this, the child is encouraged to participate in other social development activities such as celebration of occasions like birthdays, festivals and other events. The children are exposed to health camps, educational and awareness programmes and other activities to keep them abreast with the latest about their surroundings.

In the course of rehabilitation the child decides as to what he desires to do, accordingly further planning for the child’s rehabilitation is done. We emphasize on the repatriation of the child with his family, as the best environment for the child’s development is his home but do not force it upon him as the child knows better about the problems and issues in his family. For children with other motives and aspirations like pursuing further education or learning technical skills Vocational Training) for financial stability etc, we facilitate them through our support. Also elder children are helped through job placement and self-employment.