Let more orphans enter our families and give them real homes to
help them grow up, urged participants at a national conference on
orphan care Wednesday in Beijing.
Orphans who are brought up by families will find it easier to
enter real social life and will have an easier time healing from
mental distress, said Peng Min, a Beijing pediatrician.
"A real family can provide more for the mental development of
orphans than orphanages do," Peng said.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs issued a regulation Wednesday to
better supervise orphan care and encourage families to take foster
children into their own homes.
The Management Measures on Family Foster Children, effective on
January 1, 2004, will provide standards and a legal basis for
placing foster children with families, said Civil Affairs Vice
Minister Li Baoku Wednesday.
Orphans and disabled children who were abandoned by their
families and are less than 18 years old can be raised by families
which have stable incomes and adults aged between 30 and 65, the
regulation says.
Local civil affairs departments, the legal guardians of orphans
in China, will provide money for host families to cover expenses of
living, education and medical care costs for orphans, the
regulation says.
Host families need to sign contracts with local civil affairs
departments on taking care of orphans. The foster placements can be
either long- or short-term, according to the contract.
Thanks to the fast improvement of people's lives, more and more
people pay attention to social welfare and want to provide a
helping hand to the needy, especially orphans, Li said.
The country had 178 state-invested orphanages?at the end of
2002, which took care of more than 54,000 orphans, most of whom
were disabled, ministry statistics show.
Non-government organizations and some overseas charity
organizations such as the UK-based
Save the Children have also provided aid to help take better
care of the orphans through cooperation projects and direct
investment, Li said.
(China Daily October 30, 2003)