A planned inspection found children working at several food establishments. Six entered a formal protection process that day.
The Labour Department, the anti-human-trafficking unit, the police and DEHAT community social workers ran the inspection together. There was resistance at some of the establishments.
The children went through medical and age-assessment procedures and were presented before the Child Welfare Committee with their parents or guardians. The Committee directed the families to come back with evidence of school enrolment.
That direction is the hinge of the whole case. Removal from a workplace settles nothing on its own - the economic pressure that put a child in a kitchen is still in the household, and a school still has to admit and keep a returning learner.
Community workers followed up. All six children were attending school. Work continued to connect the families to labour and social-protection schemes.
Statutory agencies held the legal authority. Families carried the transition. The children made the hardest move, which was going back into a classroom after months of being useful somewhere else.
The Committee asked the families to return with proof of enrolment. That is the sentence that made it stick.
Follow-up Is the Expensive Part
An inspection is a day. Keeping six children in school and getting their families onto schemes is months of quiet work by people who live nearby. That work has no headline and is the reason the six did not go back.