SCHEMES FOR CHILDREN

The Ministry of Women and Child Development is implementing various schemes through the States/UTs in a predefined cost sharing norms for the betterment of children including girl child in the country. These include:

1. Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (BBBP) : BBBP scheme under Sambal sub-scheme of Mission Shakti aims to prevent Gender biased sex selective elimination, to ensure survival and protection of girl child and also to ensure education of the girl child. The scheme has been expanded to cover all the districts of the country through multi-sectoral interventions focused on zero-budget advertising and encouraging greater spend on activities that have on ground impact, e.g., promotion of sports among girls, self-defence camps, construction of girls toilets, making available sanitary napkin vending machines and sanitary pads especially in educational institutions, awareness about Pre-Conception & Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994 (PC-PNDT Act, 1994) and skilling of girls etc.

The scheme is 100% funded by the Central Government and the funds are routed through State to districts for multi-sectoral interventions. The Union Government is implementing BBBP scheme on PAN India basis. However, the state of West Bengal is not implementing BBBP scheme.

2. Saksham Anganwadi and Mission Poshan 2.0 Scheme : The scheme aims to address Government’s commitment to address the challenge of child malnutrition and maternal under-nutrition through a strategic shift in nutrition content and delivery and create conditions and a convergent eco-system to develop practices that nurture health, wellness and immunity. Components under SakshamAnganwadi have been reorganized in primary verticals :

1. Nutrition Support for POSHAN and for Adolescent Girls; Early Childhood Care and Education [3-6 years];
2. Anganwadi Infrastructure including modern, upgraded SakshamAnganwadis. Beneficiaries registered at AWCs are to be covered, viz., Children 6 months – 6 years of age; Pregnant Women and Lactating Mothers (PWLM) and Adolescent Girls (14-18 years) in Aspirational Districts and NER.
3. PoshanAbhiyaan

Anganwadi services (under SakshamAnganwadi and Poshan 2.0) provides the following six services across the country through the platform of Anganwadi Centres (AWCs) to the eligible beneficiaries :

1. Supplementary Nutrition (SNP)
2. Pre-school Non-formal Education,
3. Nutrition & Health Education,
4. Immunization,
5. Health Check-up, and
6. Referral Services

Three of the six services, viz., Immunization, Health check-up and Referral Services are related to health and are provided through NHM & Public Health Infrastructure. The Anganwadi Services is a universal self-selecting Scheme available to all the beneficiaries who enroll at the AWCs. The beneficiaries under this scheme are children in the age group of 0-6 years, pregnant women and lactating mothers.

The details of supplementary nutrition provided to different categories of the beneficiaries as per the norms for 300 days in a year are given as under :

POSHAN Abhiyaan: POSHAN Abhiyaan aims to address malnutrition issues across the country through components like ICT Application, Convergence, Community Mobilization, Behavioural Change & Jan Andolan, Capacity Building, Incentives and Awards, and Innovations. The Abhiyaan also aims at improving the nutritional status of Children from 0-6 years, Adolescent Girls, Pregnant Women and Lactating Mothers. POSHAN Abhiyaan focuses on convergence among partner Ministries leveraging technology and Jan Andolan among other things, to address issue of malnutrition comprehensively. Near-real time reporting by field functionaries and improved MIS is aimed at smooth implementation of scheme and better service delivery.

The goals of POSHAN Abhiyaan are to achieve improvement in nutritional status of Children from 0-6 years, Adolescent Girls, Pregnant Women and Lactating Mothers, in a time bound manner with fixed targets as under :

The efforts under the Supplementary Nutrition Programme under Anganwadi Services and POSHAN Abhiyaan have been rejuvenated and converged as ‘SakshamAnganwadi and POSHAN 2.0’ (Mission Poshan 2.0). It seeks to address the challenges of malnutrition in children, adolescent girls, pregnant women and lactating mothers through a strategic shift in nutrition content and delivery and by creation of a convergent eco-system to develop and promote practices that nurture health, wellness and immunity.

Poshan 2.0 focuses on Maternal Nutrition, Infant and Young Child Feeding Norms, Treatment of Moderately Acute Malnourished/Severely Acute Malnourished children and Wellness through AYUSH. It rests on the pillars of Convergence, Governance, and Capacity-building. POSHAN Abhiyaan is the key pillar for Outreach and will cover innovations related to nutritional support, ICT interventions, Media Advocacy and Research, Community Outreach and Jan Andolan. Steps have been taken to improve nutritional quality and testing in accredited labs, strengthen delivery and leverage technology under the ‘Poshan Tracker’, a robust ICT enabled platform to improve governance with regard to real time monitoring of provisioning of supplementary nutrition for prompt supervision and management of services.

All the States/UTs have been covered under the Abhiyaan and thus implementing the scheme to ensure a holistic approach.

3. Mission VatsalyaScheme : The Ministry is implementing a centrally sponsored scheme namely Mission Vatsalya Scheme to support the State and UT Governments for delivering services for Children in Need of Care and Protection (CNCP) and Children in Conflict with Law (CCL). The Child Care Institutions (CCIs) established under the scheme support inter-alia age-appropriate education, access to vocational training, recreation, health care and counselling. The Ministry regularly follows up with the State/ UT Governments so as to ensure that CCIs adhere to the standards of care as per the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 (as amended in 2021) provisions. Various advisories have been sent to all State/UT Governments regarding mandatory inspection of all CCIs.

Fortification of staple food items, including salt, is one of the strategies to address micronutrient deficiencies in addition to dietary diversification and micronutrient supplementation along with other measures like infection control, water and sanitation, etc. Therefore, in order to reduce the prevalence of micronutrient deficiencies including anaemia, emphasis is given on all the strategies through the Schemes/programmes implemented by the various Departments/ Ministries. These include iron and folic acid supplementation, calcium supplementation, Vitamin-A supplementation, use of fortified food items, etc. Ministry has issued advisory to all the States/UTs to ensure use of relevant fortified food articles (wherever supplied), including Double Fortified Salt in the administration of the Supplementary Nutrition Programme.

Further, under Poshan 2.0, focus is on diet diversity, food fortification, leveraging traditional systems of knowledge and popularizing use of millets. Nutrition awareness strategies under Poshan 2.0 aim to develop sustainable health and well-being with focus on local, wholesome foods to bridge dietary gaps including deficit in the intake of micronutrients. Also, as per the Scheme Guidelines, local foods and fresh produce (green vegetables, fruits, medicinal plants and herbs), fortified rice and mandatory incorporation of millets at least once a week in meals for different categories of beneficiaries to promote health, wellness and immunity and to manage anaemia.

In order to address the issue of anaemia, the Government has approved the supply of fortified rice (fortified with Iron, Vitamin B-12 and Folic Acid) throughout the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) and in Other Welfare Schemes of Government of India in all States and Union Territories (UTs) in a phased manner. Under SakshamAnganwadi and Poshan 2.0, Fortified Rice is allocated to all the States/UTs.

This information was given by the Minister of Women and Child Development, Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani, in a written reply in Lok Sabha today.

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SS/TFK