By Amira El Sayed Cairo, April 15, 2018 - A snapshot of some streets in Egypt can reveal barefoot people in worn clothes who take pavements as their homes. The stories that led them to the streets are different, but the streets are the common ground among them. The Ministry of Social Solidarity is giving the issue of homeless people, especially children, top priority. "Children without Shelter" is one of the programmes launched by the Ministry to support and offer psychological rehabilitation for children recovered from the streets. The role of the so-called Rapid Intervention Team, which targets all homeless people, not only children has recently been under the spotlight following its success in saving many homeless people, including children, teenagers and the elderly and helping them to start a new chapter in life. After reviewing the situations of orphanages and care centres, the Ministry decided to form the Central Rapid Intervention Team in 2014 in order to provide permanent support as well as to take swift action in urgent cases. The team has six members: a President, Vice President and four social and psychological experts. Three months after forming the central team, the ministry formed local teams in 26 governorates nationwide except the New Valley since there is no care centre there. These local teams adopt the same approach as the central team. They comprise around 118 sociologists who are trained on time management and the mechanisms of rapid intervention. "The central team is authorised to take the required action against the grave malpractices of some orphanages and care centres. The team also co-ordinates with the authorities concerned on relevant issues," Mohamed Youssef, the Vice- President of the Central Rapid Intervention Team told The Egyptian Gazette. Around 17 shelters in Cairo, Giza, Aswan, Daqahliya and Beheira have been closed due to major mistakes, he said. Besides monitoring the care centres, these teams play a crucial role in recovering people from streets and providing them with adequate shelters and rehabilitation. "From October 2014 to December 2016, the central team intervened in 350 cases. Over 30 months, they also saved 577 homeless people. From 2017 until the present, the team recovered 170 people from streets,"Youssef said. According to the ministry's official statements, there are around 18,000 homeless children. Approximately, 80 per cent of them live in 10 of the country's governorates. Due to the role played by the central and local teams in helping the homeless start a new life, the teams have won public trust. And this has helped them to co-operate with social media pages to approach homeless people who require swift help, Youssef said. "We also have a hotline that works around the clock to receive reports about homeless people or complaints related to orphanages and care centres," Youssef said. These teams, Youssef continued, are the ministry's tools to save the homeless swiftly and to monitor the performance of the shelters. Aya Hady, a sociologist at Helwan University, told The Gazette that caring for these people in shelters is more important than just recovering them from the streets. "For instance, after recovering a child from a street, the team makes sure that he will get the required care. Otherwise, the child would be twice victimised if he goes to a bad orphanage," she said. Medical care should not be overlooked, she added. "Elderly people require regular medical check-ups as well as psychological support. All these points should be taken into consideration to help these people lead a normal life. It is about quality not quantity. These teams should not give priority to the numbers of people they save to put these figures in their reports. It is more important to turn those people into good, productive citizens," she concluded.
