All of us want to be loved and more so by our own loved ones. One of the acceptable norms for a child growing up in a child care institution (CCI) to grow up in a balanced way is to allow him/ her to have access to his family members to visit but how many times should the childcare institution allow such visits?
Different CCI's have different kinds of visitation policies (some allow once in three months for four hours while others allow once a month for eight hours) because they are unaware of JJ act/ rule requirement. Here is what sub-rule (1) of 2016 JJ model rule 74 states about the visitation of a child's family:
74. Visits to and communication with children.- (1) Every child in the Child Care Institution may be
permitted to have one meeting in a week with his relatives:
When one interprets the legislation, two words have to be kept in mind namely 'may be' and 'shall be'. When the legislation is structured with 'may be' (as above), there is a little wiggle room but when structured with 'shall be' it means it has no wiggle room.
Although the above given rule is structured with 'may be' to give a wiggle room, I wouldn't recommend anyone to deviate too far out to be non-compliant. For example, when the rule stipulates, once a week, having the visitation policy that allows once in four weeks may be too long.
My sincere suggestion is that we ought to go over and above the requirement (of JJ rules) in the best interest of the child that we choose to care. Does that mean that we ought to allow the family to visit more than once a week? Allow me to explain our childcare institution visitation policy.
Our policy states that the family members are allowed to visit the child as many times as they want (so long as the child is in CCI and not in school) but they shall not visit less than once a month. By having such a policy, child is always surprised to have his/her since we do not have an assigned day for it.
What are your thoughts? Please write in the comments section below.
Comments
Post a Comment