Street Children’s Problems and Services in Indonesia : Centering on Jakarta

This paper concerning street children in Indonesia aims to clarify what street children are doing, why they have become street children and live in streets, and how they are supported in Indonesia, centering on Jakarta. As a result, this paper consists of five chapters. The first chapter is Introduction. The second chapter presents the description of current situation of street children, and the third chapter reviews the legislation on street children. The fourth chapter describes the care and services for street children, and the last chapter is Concluding remarks. The outline of this paper is as follows. Street children in Jakarta mostly work in the informal sector as shoe-shiners, street peddling, street singers, baggage carriers, car washers, beggars, and illegal parking assistants etc. People can find them easily in such areas as traditional market, mall, train station, bus station, or congested intersection. Poverty is regarded as one of the most notable reasons for being street children in Indonesia. Poverty clearly plays a major role in low school participation and drop out, pushing children to the street, pushing girl children into commercial sex industry, and pushing children to work full or part-time earlier. Furthermore, the urban phenomenon of street children in Indonesia is largely related to such serious family problems as family discord, domestic violence, divorce, abuse, remarriage involving children, and so on. The pattern of their dwellings varies from street children’s conditions. There are more than seven children who live together renting a small house in a common neighborhood, while there are lots of children using a place such as in front of a store, in the terminal, in a park, under a bridge, or in the market as their shelters. In relation to the services and protections for street children at the Government level, policy makers’ response was very late although they have been recognizing the serious street children’s problems over the last decade. Until 1996/7 government response to the problem of street children was similar response to the problems of adults Homeless and Beggars, which were based on the general idea that only income generating programs would be adequate. The first government sponsored program responding to the specific needs of street children implemented by Ministry of Social Affairs began only with a multi-year UNDP (United Nations Development Program) assisted project called “The Protection and Provision of Social Assistance to Street Children through Open House”. This program was designed and implemented as a crises response through intensive cooperation with NGOs in seven main cities in Indonesia. After the program the number of Open House (OH) fully managed by NGOs has been increasing since then. As a whole, OH aims to help street children to move out of street life, and it functions as a place where children may find refuge, education (literacy programs), foods, and psycho-social help. Although each NGO has their own way of helping street children through the intervention process in OH, the practices of NGOs basically cannot be separated from the political and economic conditions in Indonesia. Accordingly, some confusion and problems recently took place between government agencies and NGOs in the actual implementations of the OH concept and its operation. Consequently, OHs have had to face many obstacles in developing the centre including limited funds, limited authority and freedom to operate its own centre, the limited number of social workers to deal with the children in the centre and so on. After all, Indonesia Government does not yet enact the comprehensive legislation and policy for supporting street children, and so the Government seems to be irresponsible for Indonesia people because Government policy makers have not discharged their duty to save and support street children, although they have recognized the existence of lots of street children over the last decade.departmental bulletin pape