Developing community-based child protection in China
Tingyu Wang
Save the Children UK
Contact Email:   smileywangsavethechildren.org.cn

This paper reports on the impact of development of working community-based child protection mechanisms in China. While legislation exists, there is a gulf between legal/policy intentions and their effective implementation and practice. There is no integrated mechanism nor national system for the effective protection of children. A large part of the problem is identifying methods and processes of work that are effective, and take account of the diversity of children and childhoods across the country.

A series of pilot projects take identified and particular issues of abuse, vulnerability and children’s rights violations as focus for development of local, community-based children’s centres, that act as hubs for integrating child protection mechanisms across sectors and agencies. Children’s participation is a core work-method alongside research and monitoring of impact monitoring across five dimensions of change.

Child abuse in China takes many forms. Street children, trafficking, exploitation are increasingly recognised, and being linked to home violence. These issues remain sensitive for open discussion, and sexual abuse even more so. Educational pressures produce emotional stresses that some children find intolerable, and injure themselves. Existing systems of child welfare are based on older assumptions/norms and struggling to adjust to the impact of economic reform, with growing unemployment, geographical and rural-urban inequalities, that have brought migration, trafficking, domestic tensions and increases in crime.

Results of project work so far show how participatory centres and other mechanisms have reduced trafficking, promoted children’s resilience, provided psycho-social support: some children have reported a reduction in violence.

Paper Download Information (if available):

Chen_25.pdf

Copyright © 2007 Social Policy Research Centre.