Project Overview

The Support Persons Program, implemented by the Just Rights for Children seeks to enhance the quality of care and support provided to child sexual abuse survivors in India. In alignment with the Supreme Court’s directive and the guidelines issued by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), the program focuses on legal and psychosocial support, compensation delivery, and interdepartmental coordination.

The initiative is being implemented across four states: Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, and West Bengal, through a network of grantee organizations. It aims to improve survivor recovery, rehabilitation, and reintegration by strengthening support mechanisms and institutional engagement.

Project Objectives

The assessment focused on understanding:

• The quality and consistency of support delivered to survivors under the Support Persons Program;
• How effectively the NCPCR guidelines and Supreme Court directive are being operationalized at the district level;
• The roles played by state and local government departments, grantee organizations, support persons, and families in implementation;
• Survivor experiences and the outcomes of educational and vocational training support provided under the program;
• Key enablers and barriers to institutionalizing and sustaining the intervention across geographies.

Athena’s Role

Athena Infonomics undertook the assessment of the Just Rights for Children initiative to assess the operational effectiveness and sustainability of the Support Persons Program. The study combined desk research, tool development, field-based data collection, and analysis. Key activities included:

• Facilitating structured conversations with stakeholders at the district level, including government actors, NGO partners, survivors, and their families;
• Reviewing program documentation, academic literature, and internal datasets to contextualize findings and inform data collection tools;
• Designing interview guides and questionnaires tailored to different stakeholder groups;
• Conducting fieldwork across the four focus states to gather both qualitative and quantitative data;
• Synthesizing findings into a final report with actionable recommendations.

Key Insights

The study supported Just Rights for Children in strengthening its understanding of implementation outcomes and system-level challenges. It helped surface survivor perspectives, gaps in interdepartmental collaboration, and the varying capacities of program partners. The findings informed recommendations to support long-term sustainability and institutionalization of the program, providing a foundation for scaling survivor support systems through coordinated, multi-stakeholder engagement.