Over 1,800 children reunited with families after Feb 6 earthquakes

ANKARA

Ayşegül Yıldırım Kara, Director General of Child Services at the Family and Social Policies Ministry, said that 1,874 of the 1,912 children taken under protection following the Kahramanmaraş-centered earthquakes that affected 11 provinces have been reunited with their families within a year.

Kara stated that the ministry quickly formed a crisis desk after the earthquakes and said, "In the first minutes of the earthquake, this crisis team contacted the provinces to ensure coordination in all areas where we provide services. We first reached out to the children who stayed in our institutions as boarders in the earthquake region and transferred approximately 900 children to our institutions in different regions of Türkiye within 48 hours."

With cooperation from other ministries and organizations, the children who lost their relatives in the earthquake, whose families could not be reached or who were unidentified, were identified.

"We had 1,912 children who were contacted by our ministry. Of these 1,912 children, we reunited 1,874 of them with their families after carrying out identification work. We acted strictly on scientific evidence."

Kara stated that 16 of the children died during the hospitalization process, six of them were given to foster families, 15 of them were taken under care and protection in ministry institutions, and one of them is still being treated.

The minister also shared that the follow-up of psychosocial support processes of children under protection and care continued, and that special activities for children with post-traumatic stress disorder were carried out.

"Our field screening teams have worked to support approximately 4 million children in the earthquake region one by one in terms of psychosocial support. Of these, about 4,000 children had lost their relatives. We also carried out one-to-one follow-ups of children who lost their mothers, fathers or both their mothers and fathers," she stated.

Highlighting that the ministry’s work in the earthquake region has also worked to support adults, Kara said, "We have also strengthened our support for parents. While we provided psychosocial support to both families and children, we also provided psychosocial support services to our colleagues."