Children are the future of our country. In order to thoroughly study and implement the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping's important instructions on children's work, and implement the deployment of this year's National Civil Affairs Work Conference, China Civil Affairs magazine specially planned a special report on "Promoting the Innovative Development of Child Welfare Work in the New Era" in June, and invited experts and scholars in the field of child welfare, heads of civil affairs departments and child welfare institutions, and directors of grassroots children to conduct a special discussion on how to promote the innovative development of child welfare work. The topics of the discussion covered care services for migrant children, categorical protection for children in difficulty, care and protection for left-behind children, and child adoption, aiming to promote the high-quality development of child welfare in the new era and jointly safeguard the future and hope of the motherland.
Today's recommendation is "The care and protection of left-behind children should be implemented at the grassroots level", "Pay attention to the improvement of the quality of care services for left-behind children in rural areas", "Give full play to the role of "children's homes", "Left-behind children need to have a "spiritual home", and "We should speed up the improvement of the child adoption assessment system".
Care and protection for left-behind children
Care and protection for left-behind children
It is necessary to implement it in detail at the grassroots level
Zhang Hongmei, Li Lin
Left-behind children face problems such as emotional loss, lagging education, and potential safety hazards in the process of growing up, and these problems will also emerge with some new situations with economic and social development. Combined with the specific practice of Enshi City, Hubei Province, the following discussions are made on the care and protection of left-behind children.
The work of left-behind children in rural areas is facing
New situations and new problems
There is a gap between basic and quality education. In the growth of left-behind children, their grandparents have become the guardianship and education subjects of the children, and under the influence of the traditional education concepts of their ancestors, left-behind children have deficiencies in basic education, quality education, and mental health education. The grandparents are committed to solving the problem of food and clothing for their children, and they are satisfied with their children materially, which is easy to overspoil. At the same time, due to the limitations of their own cultural quality, there is a lack of effective guidance and economic investment in children's basic education counseling and personalized ability training. The second is to focus on the immediate and ignore the long-term. Most of the grandparents failed to receive a good education, did not attach enough importance to education, could not correctly understand the long-term significance of education work, and the concept of working early and earning money early was deeply rooted. The third is to emphasize the appearance and ignore the heart. Adolescent children are psychologically sensitive, the psychological defense line is weak, their parents are absent all the year round, and their grandparents do not pay attention to mental health guidance, and left-behind children are prone to psychological problems.
Guardianship responsibilities and supervision obligations are difficult to implement. One is the lack of parental companionship. Due to work and other reasons, there is a state of separation between parents and children in rural areas, and the implementation of guardianship responsibilities mainly relies on telephone, video, etc., and there is a lack of daily supervision, and it is difficult to implement the main responsibility of guardianship. The second is the lack of family affection. In rural areas, especially in economically underdeveloped mountainous areas, the original environment of left-behind children's families is poor. Parents are divorced, left-behind families become single-parent families, parents are more likely to fulfill their support obligations, and children have been in a state of lack of family affection for a long time. The third is the lack of guardianship ability. The guardians of left-behind children are mainly grandparents or other relatives, who are busy with farm work most of the time, and the content of guardianship is limited to life care, and the implementation of guardianship responsibilities mainly depends on the sense of responsibility and educational philosophy of guardians, and most left-behind children have obvious gaps in healthy growth and education.
There are new changes in the risk factors for safe growth. First, the coverage of educational resources is narrow, and traffic hazards are prominent. Most of the educational resources in townships and towns are concentrated in market towns, and there are characteristics of sparse people in mountainous areas, and students have inconvenient transportation to school, and most of them are picked up and dropped off by tricycles and motorcycles driven by grandparents or other guardians, which has potential safety hazards. Second, it is easy to indulge in the Internet, and the means of restraint and guidance are insufficient. Affected by new media such as mobile phones and the Internet, adolescent children have unsound physical and psychological development, poor self-control, and lack of parental restraint and scientific guidance. Third, the publicity and education efforts are insufficient, and the growth escort is missing. Insufficient publicity on sex education, health education, guardianship obligations, and the Law on the Protection of Minors, left-behind children's awareness of self-protection is not strong, and guardians lack attention to children's sex education, resulting in frequent incidents of left-behind children being violated.
The forces of social care and protection are scattered and the joint force is insufficient. On the one hand, care and protection measures are not perfect. The "Child Companion Mother", "Caring Mothers Pair Care for Left-behind Children", "Charity Mulan", and "Rainbow Action" are all active projects that care for left-behind children, and the support areas, service numbers, and capital investment are limited, and the coverage of the beneficiary group is narrow. Some social organizations' care services are constrained by factors such as funding and personnel, and the content and duration of care services are limited, and they are not systematic and sustainable. On the other hand, the synergy of care and protection is insufficient. Government departments, social organizations, volunteers, caring people and other forces are scattered, coupled with the lack of a big data information platform for the care and protection of left-behind children, information sharing is not timely, and the work results are not obvious.
New forms of business and new problems have emerged in child care. On the one hand, the standards for the construction and operation of custodian institutions are not clear. In order to solve the problems of daily pick-up and drop-off and study counseling for left-behind children, left-behind children's care institutions came into being. These institutions are managed through full-day care services that meet the needs of children in daily life and provide basic education support. At present, the person in charge of this kind of custodian institution is opened through leasing private houses, there are no normative construction standards, fire safety management is weak, infrastructure construction is not perfect, the ability of service personnel is uneven, and there are potential safety hazards and regulatory pressure. On the other hand, renting a house to accompany students has increased the burden on families. In order to solve the problem of picking up and dropping off their children, some families living in remote areas choose to rent a house near the school to accompany them, which creates new economic pressure and increases the burden on the family.
Strengthen the care and protection of left-behind children
countermeasures and suggestions
Strike a balance between categorical care and ongoing protection. On the one hand, it is necessary to ensure the sustainability of active care programs and fully meet the special needs of left-behind children. On the other hand, on the basis of a single activity project, inclusive care and protection projects should be introduced, ensuring capital investment, strengthening the cultivation of service teams and professional guidance, and ensuring that the care and protection of left-behind children is implemented at the grassroots level.
Put family education at the forefront of care and protection work. The family is the first school, parents are the first teachers of children, and the problem of left-behind children in rural areas is an inevitable product of social development, and it is necessary to guide parents to establish a correct view of family and education through measures such as setting up family education and counseling stations, improve the level of education and guidance of parents in the process of children's growth, and urge parents to earnestly fulfill their guardianship responsibilities.
Standardize the establishment and management of care and protection institutions for left-behind children at the national level. On the one hand, "left-behind children's homes" should be built in each township or sub-district concentration area, improve the service content, and strive to meet the needs of left-behind children in life, learning and other aspects. On the other hand, the construction standards and management norms of relevant derivative institutions such as "left-behind child care institutions" have been issued to ensure them from the policy level.
Strengthen the construction of spiritual civilization and rural customs in remote rural areas. On the one hand, enrich the forms of cultural entertainment. In rural areas, we should intensify the publicity of excellent traditional cultural stories, calligraphy exhibitions, and literary and artistic performances, create a strong cultural atmosphere, and change the inherent concepts of our ancestors in rural areas. On the other hand, optimize the educational environment. In rural areas, we should intensify the building of spiritual civilization and rural civilization, form a scientific and civilized atmosphere, establish a correct orientation, and optimize the environment for educating people.
Increase support for remote mountainous areas in the central and western regions. On the one hand, it is inclined from the policy aspect. Enrich the content of care and protection projects for left-behind children, increase project financial support, and ensure that projects are sustainable and have wide coverage. On the other hand, it focuses on solving the problem of rural employment. It is suggested that employment positions should be reasonably planned, employment training and local employment subsidies should be increased, and the problem of left-behind children in rural areas should be solved at the root. (Author's Affiliation: Enshi Civil Affairs Bureau, Hubei Province)
Pay attention to left-behind children in rural areas
The quality of care services has been improved
Tension Dan
In recent years, Wenxi County, Shanxi Province, has focused on the care of minors, especially rural left-behind children and children in difficulty, established a coordination and care for children, issued implementation opinions on strengthening the care and protection of rural left-behind children, established a strong leadership and coordination mechanism for the protection of rural left-behind children, formed a service network with horizontal linkage between departments and vertical guidance at the county, township and village levels, and comprehensively established a work system in which families, governments, and schools fulfill their duties and social forces actively participate. At present, Wenxi County has built 60 "children's homes" in 12 townships and communities, with 18 children's supervisors and 195 children's directors, solving the problems of left-behind children's family loss, learning and psychological imbalance, and embarking on a road of care and service for left-behind children with Wenxi characteristics.
Combined with the specific practice of Wenxi County, the work of left-behind children is also facing some new situations: First, the personal safety supervision of some left-behind children is not in place. Due to the reform of the education system and the merger of rural schools, some left-behind children have left their places of residence to go to school in towns (county seats), and have become migrant children living in schools or renting houses or joining relatives, and are under the guardianship of their grandparents. Due to the lack of attention to safety in the education of the next generation, safety accidents such as child drowning, electric shock, and car accidents occur from time to time. Second, the supervision of cyber security for some left-behind children is not in place. With the rapid development of the Internet, left-behind children spend more and more time using mobile phones and computers, but due to the lack of parental guidance and constraints, they are prone to indulge in online games and become disgusted with school, and even suffer from cyberbullying, pornography and online fraud. Third, some left-behind children have mental health problems. Left-behind children are mentally immature, and due to environmental changes and lack of guardianship, especially during adolescence, they are prone to negative emotions such as shyness, anxiety, isolation, and low self-esteem, and even mental health problems such as escapism and suicide. Fourth, the role of the care service system for left-behind children is not fully played. At present, the county, township and village care service system has been basically built in place, but the role is not good enough, which is manifested in: there is policy support, but the implementation is not strong enough, and the implementation of some policies is not good, especially in recent years, the government has compressed financial expenditures, and it is difficult to guarantee the cost of government procurement services; However, the remuneration of child supervisors and child directors is low, and the incentive policy is weak, resulting in the instability of the team; There are personnel, but the degree of specialization is not high, and there is a lack of professional skills.
Based on the new situation and new problems in the work of left-behind children, the following countermeasures and suggestions are put forward:
The first is to publicize and build momentum and increase the popularization of safety knowledge for left-behind children. On the one hand, the relevant departments should take the lead in organizing, linking the resources of social organizations, and increasing the publicity of safety knowledge on a regular basis or at important nodes such as holidays, so that safety education can enter schools and families, so as to prevent problems before they occur; On the other hand, we will work with relevant units for left-behind children's care services to increase the intensity of investigation of risks and hidden dangers, so as to achieve early detection, early warning, and early prevention.
The second is to strengthen the establishment of the rule of law, increasing the publicity and law enforcement of the "Regulations on the Protection of Minors Online" and other relevant laws and regulations. Relevant departments should strengthen education, demonstration, guidance, and oversight of minors' use of the internet. Support social organizations in carrying out various and colorful thematic activities, and educate and guide left-behind children to use the Internet correctly. Regulate online conduct, severely punish Internet violations in accordance with law, clean up negative online information, and purify the online ecological environment.
The third is to pay attention to quality improvement and increase the implementation of the three-year action to improve the quality of care services for left-behind children. Include work on the care of left-behind children in the government's key livelihood matters, increase the extent of departmental coordination and cooperation, strengthen financial safeguards for left-behind children's care, implement project-based and list-based management of 18 items of content in 5 areas, and ensure that the rights and interests of left-behind children are more effectively protected through methods such as people's congress and CPPCC supervision and timely assessment and feedback. (The author is Secretary of the Party Leadership Group and Director of the Civil Affairs Bureau of Wenxi County, Shanxi Province)
Give full play to the role of "children's homes" as fronts
Ma Xiaomei
The parents of left-behind children go out to work all year round and are taken care of by their grandparents, and although the children's diet and daily life are guaranteed, they are facing some new problems and challenges in other aspects.
In terms of learning, some left-behind children lack self-discipline awareness, have a negative learning attitude, and it is difficult to improve their grades. In terms of life, left-behind children have poor self-care ability and difficulty in developing good living habits and behavioral habits. Due to the indulgence of the grandparents and the compensatory psychology of the parents, it is easy to form a lazy character and living state; There are many potential safety hazards, and children's personal safety is facing challenges. In terms of psychology, some left-behind children are prone to personality and behavior deviations, seemingly naughty and lively, but sensitive and fragile, lack of self-confidence, just in adolescence, rebellious psychology and rebellious psychology are more prominent.
The "Children's Home" is a place for left-behind children to learn on weekends and holidays, and plays a certain role in the care and protection of left-behind children. However, at present, some "children's homes" have poor facilities and do not have full-time and professional management, which affects their role. It is recommended that full-time children's directors be set up as much as possible, and that children's directors be given professional training in areas such as psychology and social assistance, and that the facilities and equipment of "children's homes" be improved, and that some care service activities be organized and carried out on a regular basis, so as to make up for the shortcomings of work for left-behind children in rural areas.
In short, protecting left-behind children is not a one-day task, but requires the joint and long-term unremitting efforts of families, schools and society. (The author is the director of children in Longmen Village, Longmen Township, Yongping County, Yunnan Province)
Left-behind babies need to have a "spiritual home"
Li Tzu'e
In Xinghuo Village, Xinpu Town, Xiaonan District, Xiaogan City, Hubei Province, where I live, in addition to some children who follow their migrant parents to study and live in the city, nearly 80% of the children who have lived in the village for a long time are left-behind children and children in difficulty. The guardians of these children are either elderly, left-behind women with low education or people with disabilities, who can only provide basic care at the level of life. Due to the lack of a good learning environment and positive role models, children generally lack learning consciousness, and the proportion of learning difficulties reaches more than 30%.
Adolescence is a critical period for children's physical development, character development, and knowledge accumulation, while left-behind children in rural areas mostly grow up in an environment where emotional care is lacking, and may be burdened with certain psychological trauma, resulting in sensitive temperament, low self-esteem, dislike of communicating with others, and some will also have personality disorders, psychological deviation imbalance and other problems. During the home visits, we also found that parents of left-behind children generally lack family education knowledge, do not accompany their children to read, and are less likely to carry out parent-child activities to promote their children's ability development. Children who lack guidance and care are very susceptible to the negative influence of society and "go astray".
Therefore, we took the "Children's Home" as a position and launched the "Four-and-a-half Classroom" childcare service. The "Four-and-a-half Classroom" focuses on loving companionship, taking into account homework tutoring, and guiding the formation of habits, which is welcomed by students and parents. Later, we also added hosting services on weekends and during winter and summer vacations. Especially during the winter and summer vacations, we connected with the local university teaching team to provide learning guidance to the children, carried out educational activities and safety and health education, took the children to learn about the local intangible cultural heritage carving and paper-cutting, went to the martyrs' cemetery to carry out red theme education, and read books and popular science comics together, all of which received good results. In the past, introverted children dared to speak on stage, and their always tense little faces began to smile, and children who couldn't sit still could also calm down and read books.
Services for left-behind children in rural areas should be expanded from basic livelihood guarantees, and diversified services should be provided in a targeted manner according to the different needs of each child. Consideration may be given to having the civil affairs department take the lead, effectively linking social work organizations, volunteer teams, caring units, and other social resources, and solving the problem of operating funds for "children's homes" through charity sales and other means. At the same time, with the help of professional strength, we provide a variety of services such as social guardianship, psychological counseling, parent-child relationship adjustment, and interpersonal relationship improvement, so that children have more possibilities for the future and have more space for growth. (The author is the children's director of Xinghuo Village, Xinpu Town, Xiaonan District, Xiaogan City, Hubei Province)
Child adoption
The improvement of the system for assessing child adoption should be accelerated
Fan Zhangling
The adoption assessment system is a normative management method established by the civil affairs department to implement the Civil Code, further strengthen the management of adoption registration, and continue to standardize the adoption assessment work. At present, the mainland child adoption assessment system is mainly led by the civil affairs department, which strengthens supervision, management and guidance, and encourages the participation of third-party assessment agencies to carry out assessments. The assessment is conducted through interviews, interviews, surveys, visits, etc., to comprehensively evaluate the adopter's motivation for adoption, economic status, economic capacity, health status, and parenting arrangements, so as to judge the adopter's ability to adopt. This method of independent assessment by a third party commissioned by the administrative agency is similar to the international model of administrative leadership. However, from the perspective of specific practice, there are still some aspects that need to be further clarified in the implementation of the adoption assessment system, that is, clarifying the adoption assessment indicators, standardizing the adoption assessment procedures, cultivating the evaluation talent team, establishing the assessment operation guarantee mechanism, and strengthening the management of assessment files.
In order to comprehensively promote the high-quality development of child adoption in mainland China, and accelerate the improvement of the child adoption assessment system, the following countermeasures and suggestions are proposed:
Define adoption evaluation metrics. Shanghai, Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, Ningxia and other places have successively issued policies related to adoption assessment, and the evaluation indicators formulated basically include the basic situation of the family, the motivation and preparation for adoption, the occupation and economic status, marital status, health status, the ability to raise and educate, the family living status, the moral character, and the status of the members living together. The author suggests categorizing and refining the evaluation indicators, such as negative indicators, general indicators, and bonus indicators. Since the indicators formulated by various localities generally lack the relevant content of integration assessment, the specific content of the supporting materials provided by the adoptive family should be clarified according to the adoption assessment indicators, so as to avoid inconsistent requirements for supporting materials by various assessment agencies, which will affect the assessment results. It is recommended to improve the relevant indicators to ensure the objectivity and fairness of the assessment results.
Standardize the adoption evaluation process. Clarify the subject of the assessment, and standardize the evaluator, assessment form, content, process, time limit, and other content at the stages of pre-adoption assessment, adoption capacity assessment, integration assessment, and adoption follow-up assessment. Broaden the scope of assessment, and research into including whether the person giving up for adoption meets the requirements for adoption in the scope of assessment, may be assessed and determined by the civil affairs departments in conjunction with relevant departments, but must not retain a third-party assessment. Improve the feedback system for unqualified adoption assessments, clarifying the subject of feedback, the form of feedback, and so forth. Ensure that the assessment process is rule-based, rule-based and well-documented.
Cultivating a team of evaluation talents. Continuously improving the professionalism of evaluators is the key to improving the adoption evaluation system. It is recommended that the civil affairs department's self-assessment should be the mainstay, supplemented by the assessment by entrusting a third-party agency. The first is to implement the appraiser qualification access mechanism, and conduct pre-assessment training and qualification screening for the staff who carry out the assessment; The second is to establish a database of adoption assessment experts to conduct regular screening and assessment; The third is to strengthen professional ability training, organize assessment staff to conduct relevant business training every year, clarify the duration and frequency of training, and ensure that adoption assessment personnel can understand and grasp relevant national laws, regulations and policies in a timely manner.
Establish an assessment and operation guarantee mechanism. The professional competence and perspective of the assessment implementation entity directly affect the evaluation results. At present, there are basically three types of assessment models in various localities: self-organization by welfare institutions, assessment by social organizations, and self-organization by civil affairs departments. It is recommended to establish an assessment and operation guarantee mechanism to protect the legitimate rights and interests of adopters and adopters. Specifically, it includes: strengthening the financial guarantee for the adoption assessment work to ensure the smooth development of the assessment work; Establish an adoption assessment expert group, and select members of the expert group to participate in the implementation of the assessment to ensure the fairness and impartiality of the assessment; Establish an interdisciplinary joint mechanism, and after the assessment, an interdisciplinary joint meeting can be convened to negotiate the evaluation results; Establish a follow-up and return visit mechanism, and carry out regular and irregular follow-up visits.
Strengthen the management of assessment files. The adoption assessment can be divided into the data collection stage, the implementation assessment stage, the report issuance stage, and the file organization stage. It is recommended to standardize the scope and content of the materials that should be collected and archived at each stage, comply with the principles of archiving in accordance with laws and regulations, pay attention to privacy protection, and standardize work procedures, improve the system for establishing assessment files, and clarify the work requirements for the collection, sorting, and archiving of adoption assessment materials.
The establishment of a child adoption assessment system involves multiple departments such as the administrative department, the judicial department, and social welfare institutions, which inevitably involves multiple laws and is subject to the relevant legal system. It is necessary to continuously improve legal norms and institutional safeguards, regulate adoption and adoption, and comprehensively protect the rights and interests of adopted children. (The author is Secretary of the General Party Branch and President of Ningxia Children's Welfare Institute)
Source: China Civil Affairs Magazine, June 2024