ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on institutionalized children's homelessness in Sri Lanka. It outlines environmental, social, and economic contexts contributing to the scale of children's institutional homelessness in Sri Lanka, including how these continue to interact with and implicate the children's well-being. State responses to children's homelessness are presented. The chapter presents several examples of children's experiences and then, findings from interviews with managers, carers, and policymakers about children's homes and the newly introduced standards in Sri Lanka. The much needed shifts in policy and intervention aimed to promote the rights of the child and reduce children's homelessness are discussed. The contexts for the institutionalization and homelessness of children in Sri Lanka extends from the loss of one or both parents, abject poverty, mothers migrating for employment, civil war, human-animal-environmental conflict, and natural disasters. The existence of children's homes has not solved children's homelessness in most circumstances. However, their existence has changed the social fabric of Sri Lankan society in many respects.