Dr Shekhar is a child psychiatrist with 40 years of experience in the field of child mental health but his work extends beyond the clinical population, amongst others, to children in institutions, educational spaces and in the context of law, across the country as well as the South Asia region. With a view to enabling access to mental health for the most vulnerable child populations, his special areas of interest in child mental health are childhood trauma, gender and sexuality and life skill education. An artist and musician, he uses a number of creative methodologies in child mental health interventions, including theatre in development approaches. In the belief that wider psychosocial interventions are rooted in child rights, in addition to his preventive-promotive and curative child mental health interventions, he has undertaken various legal and policy-related initiatives. He was part of national deliberations on the POCSO Act 2012 during its drafting, and more recently an active part of the debates around the December 2015 Juvenile Justice Act on children in conflict with the law. He has also engaged extensively as a member of working groups of the National Commission for Protection of Rights of the Child on issues such as substance abuse and the elimination of corporal punishment in school. Finally, all his policy and practice work find their way into training and capacity-building programs for target audiences ranging from students of mental health disciplines and mental health care professionals in clinical settings to child care service providers in non-clinical settings, including community health workers, teachers, government and non-government staff and counsellors and Judicial personnel.