Caring for Orphaned Children in China

Caring for Orphaned Children in China
Author: Shang Xiaoyuan
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2013-12-24
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0739136968

International media regularly features horrific stories about Chinese orphanages, especially when debating international adoption and human rights. Much of the popular information is dated and ill-informed about the experiences of most orphans in China today, Chinese government policy, and improvements evident in parts of China. Informal kinship care is the most common support for the orphaned children. The state supports orphans and abandoned children whose parents and relatives cannot be found or contacted. The book explores concrete examples about the changing experiences and future directions of Chinese child welfare policy. It is about the support to disadvantaged children, including abandoned children in the care of the state, most of whom have disabilities; HIV affected children; and orphans in kinship care. It identifies how many orphans are in China, how they are supported, the extent to which their rights are met, and what efforts are made to improve their rights and welfare provision. When our research about Chinese orphans started in 2001, these children were almost entirely voiceless. Since then, the Chinese government has committed to improving child welfare. We argue that a mixed welfare system, in which state provision supplements family and community care, is an effective direction to improve support for orphaned children. Government needs to take responsibility to guarantee orphans’ rights as children, and support family networks to provide care so that children can grow up in their own communities. The book contributes to academic and policy understanding of the steps that have been taken and are still required to achieve the goal of a child welfare system in China that meets the rights of orphans to live and thrive with other children in a family.

Outsourced Children

Outsourced Children
Author: Leslie Wang
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-08-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781503600119

It's no secret that tens of thousands of Chinese children have been adopted by American parents and that Western aid organizations have invested in helping orphans in China—but why have Chinese authorities allowed this exchange, and what does it reveal about processes of globalization? Countries that allow their vulnerable children to be cared for by outsiders are typically viewed as weaker global players. However, Leslie K. Wang argues that China has turned this notion on its head by outsourcing the care of its unwanted children to attract foreign resources and secure closer ties with Western nations. She demonstrates the two main ways that this "outsourced intimacy" operates as an ongoing transnational exchange: first, through the exportation of mostly healthy girls into Western homes via adoption, and second, through the subsequent importation of first-world actors, resources, and practices into orphanages to care for the mostly special needs youth left behind. Outsourced Children reveals the different care standards offered in Chinese state-run orphanages that were aided by Western humanitarian organizations. Wang explains how such transnational partnerships place marginalized children squarely at the intersection of public and private spheres, state and civil society, and local and global agendas. While Western societies view childhood as an innocent time, unaffected by politics, this book explores how children both symbolize and influence national futures.

Wish You Happy Forever

Wish You Happy Forever
Author: Jenny Bowen
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2014-03-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0062192019

Wish You Happy Forever chronicles Half the Sky founder Jenny Bowen's personal and professional journey to transform Chinese orphanages—and the lives of the neglected girls who live in them—from a state of quiet despair to one of vibrant promise. After reading an article about the thousands of baby girls languishing in Chinese orphanages, Bowen and her husband adopted a little girl from China and brought her home to Los Angeles, not out of a need to build a family but rather a commitment to save one child. A year later, as she watched her new daughter play in the grass with her friends, thriving in an environment where she knew she was loved, Bowen was overcome with a desire to help the children that she could not bring home. That very day she created Half the Sky Foundation, an organization conceived to bring love into the life of every orphan in China and one that has actually managed to fulfill its promise. In Wish You Happy Forever, a fish out of water tale like no other, Bowen relates her struggle to bring the concept of "child nurture and responsive care" to bemused Chinese bureaucrats and how she's actually succeeding. Five years after Half the Sky's first orphanage program opened, government officials began to mention child welfare and nurturing care in public speeches. And, in 2011, at China's Great Hall of the People, Half the Sky and its government partners celebrated the launch of The Rainbow Program, a groundbreaking initiative to change the face of orphan care by training every child welfare worker in the country. Thanks to Bowen's relentless perseverance through heartbreak and a dose of humor, Half the Sky's goal to bring love the lives of forgotten children comes ever closer.

China's Orphan Welfare System

China's Orphan Welfare System
Author: Anna High
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre:
ISBN:

This article presents a socio-legal analysis of the care of orphaned and other vulnerable children in China, reviewing law, policy and practice relating to state and non-state orphanages and foster homes. The analysis is first contextualized by an introduction to the demographics of children cared for in state and non-state welfare institutions; prevailing social and cultural attitudes to their rights and entitlements; and the complex nexus between the politically high-stake issue of birth planning and the arguably consequent vulnerability of such children. The article then introduces formal laws and policies relating to the care of orphans, including government duties and responsibilities towards this vulnerable population. The findings of empirical fieldwork carried out in China examining the role of “non-legal,” unregistered and unrecognized non-state actors/NGOs in filling gaps left by the formal state orphan welfare system are then presented. Although the Chinese government claims to take responsibility for orphans, and ostensibly monopolizes the running of orphanages, it is failing to recognize, regulate or oversee the prolific number of private orphanages that have emerged in the last three decades in response to perceived gaps in state-provided services. The emergence of unregulated non-state orphanages, and the gap between child welfare laws and policies, on the one hand, and practice on the other, has resulted in lines of stratification being drawn among Chinese orphans in terms of their access to care and adoption prospects. The implementation of clearer policies, and improved access to formalized state support for the currently informal non-state sector, are needed to promote better outcomes for vulnerable children and caregivers alike, as well as to better guard against sub-standard practices and neglect of orphans.

Non-Governmental Orphan Relief in China

Non-Governmental Orphan Relief in China
Author: Anna High
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2019-07-17
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0429823843

Based on field studies and in-depth interviews across rural and urban China, this book presents a socio-legal analysis of non-state organised care for some of China's most vulnerable children. The first full-length book to examine non-state organised care of modern China's ‘lonely children’ (gu'er), this book describes the context in which abandonment occurs and the care provided to children unlikely to be adopted because of their disability. It also explores the various faith groups and humanitarian workers providing this care in private orphanages and foster homes in response to perceived deficiencies in the state orphanage system, in the context of a broader societal shift from ‘welfare statism’ to ‘welfare pluralism’. Formal law and policy has not always kept pace with this shift. This study demonstrates that, in practice, state regulation of these unauthorised care providers has mostly centred on local-level negotiations, hidden rules, and discretion, with mixed outcomes for children. However there has also been a recent shift towards tighter state control and clearer laws, policies, and standards. This timely research sheds light on the life paths and stories of today's ‘lonely children’ and the changing terrain of civil society, humanitarianism, policy-making, and state power in modern China. As such, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Asian and Chinese studies, law and society, NGOs, and comparative social and child welfare.

Outsourced Children

Outsourced Children
Author: Leslie K. Wang
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2016-08-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1503600122

It's no secret that tens of thousands of Chinese children have been adopted by American parents and that Western aid organizations have invested in helping orphans in China—but why have Chinese authorities allowed this exchange, and what does it reveal about processes of globalization? Countries that allow their vulnerable children to be cared for by outsiders are typically viewed as weaker global players. However, Leslie K. Wang argues that China has turned this notion on its head by outsourcing the care of its unwanted children to attract foreign resources and secure closer ties with Western nations. She demonstrates the two main ways that this "outsourced intimacy" operates as an ongoing transnational exchange: first, through the exportation of mostly healthy girls into Western homes via adoption, and second, through the subsequent importation of first-world actors, resources, and practices into orphanages to care for the mostly special needs youth left behind. Outsourced Children reveals the different care standards offered in Chinese state-run orphanages that were aided by Western humanitarian organizations. Wang explains how such transnational partnerships place marginalized children squarely at the intersection of public and private spheres, state and civil society, and local and global agendas. While Western societies view childhood as an innocent time, unaffected by politics, this book explores how children both symbolize and influence national futures.

Death by Default

Death by Default
Author: Robin Munro
Publisher: Human Rights Watch
Total Pages: 412
Release: 1996
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9781564321633

- A New Order

China's children

China's children
Author: United States. Congressional-Executive Commission on China
Publisher:
Total Pages: 48
Release: 2003
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN:

"The Best Interest of the Child"

Author: Dennis W. Feaster
Publisher:
Total Pages: 704
Release: 2012
Genre: Child welfare
ISBN:

The purpose of this study is to explore the set of sociocultural agendas that emerge around the care of orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) in China. While there is general agreement among stakeholders about the need to work for "the best interests" of OVC, there is significant variance in how these best interests are constructed and defined. An ethnographic scan of attitudes and awareness of OVC and OVC care in Henan Province, China, provide the initial context for exploration. This context is the basis for the subsequent nested case study of a multi-party, intergovernmental cooperative project designed to develop and disseminate alternative non-institutional care systems for OVC in China. Central to this project was the proposed re-purposing of China's Child Welfare Institutes (CWIs), the large state-run congregate orphan care institutions that represent the core of China's OVC care strategies and policies. Organizations involved in the development, funding, and implementation efforts include both Chinese and US faith-based NGOs, and Chinese and US Governmental bodies. A case study analysis of the participating organizations and their interactions provide the basis for identifying the behaviorally-expressed agendas advanced by these stakeholders in the context of OVC care. The results of this analysis illustrate that the essence of the debate around "the best interests of OVC" is not primarily a Chinese vs. Western set of sociocultural agendas, but rather is a conflict between traditional Western models of institutionally-based orphan care and a Progressive/Universalist model of family- and community-based OVC care.

Child Maltreatment in Residential Care

Child Maltreatment in Residential Care
Author: Adrian V. Rus
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 533
Release: 2017-08-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3319579908

This data-rich volume reviews short- and long-term consequences of residential or institutional care for children across the globe as well as approaches to reducing maltreatment. Up-to-date findings from a wide range of developing and developed countries identify forms of abuse and neglect associated with institutionalization and their effects on development and pathology in younger children, adolescents, and alumni. The sections on intervention strategies highlight the often-conflicting objectives facing professionals and policymakers balancing the interests of children, families, and facilities. But despite many national and regional variations, two themes stand out: the universal right of children to live in safety, and the ongoing need for professionals and community to ensure this safety. Included among the topics: Maltreatment and living conditions in long-term residential institutions for children Outcomes from institutional rearing Recommendations to improve institutional living Historical, political, socio-economic, and cultural influences on Child Welfare Systems Latin American and the Caribbean, African, Asian, Middle-Eastern, Western and Eastern European countries and the United States of America are presented. Child Maltreatment in Residential Care will inform psychology professionals interested in the role of residential care in the lives of children, and possibilities for improved outcomes. It will also interest social workers and mental health practitioners and researchers seeking evidence-based interventions for families adopting children from residential care.