Abstract

The vocation in which children procure happiness and joy is the family which provides them with the basic needs of life on one hand and platform with opportunities to perceive their full potential on the other. Unfortunately, a large number of children are underprivileged of parental love, affection and protection because of death or abandonment of single or both the parents, impotence of parents to take ample care of the child due to any sort of disease, intoxication, poverty etc or also for desertion for the reason of being illegitimate child. Such are the vulnerable children who are also the victims of abuse may it be physical, mental or sexual and are often neglected by the society. Some of them become rag pickers, beggars, get engaged in petty thefts and crimes or often used as child labors by many uneducated and inhuman adults, for which they are punished in various ways. Many of them are also admitted by general public, police or any such relative to institutions or orphanages which make them prone to live in a society, and encourages them to stand on their own feet with a respectable life instead of being uncared for. This paper throws light on the social and psychological well-being of the children belonging to orphanage by taking into consideration the living environment, health care, the psychological vulnerability and the sources and functions of social support in buffering nerve-racking situations at an orphanage located at Cuttack, the silver city of eastern Indian state of Odisha, Basundhara (Rehabilitation Centre for Children, Women Aged in Distress) about the practical socio-psychological aspects, well-being and status of the orphan, abandoned and surrendered children.

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