Brace for winter, shelters are told

The Ministry of Civil Affairs has urged authorities that run homeless shelters to be prepared to offer proper help to those living on the streets this winter.

Zou Ming, vice-minister of civil affairs, said in a national video conference that shelters should follow strict working practices to help homeless people.

Shelters should be managed properly, Zou said. They must prohibit dangerous goods, such as knives or anything that could start a fire, and make an immediate search for the next of kin when a person is admitted.

"It is crucial to strengthen security checks. Dangerous goods are prohibited from shelters," Zou said, adding that staff should search everyone before they are admitted.

This is to prevent tragedies such as in August 2014 when a vagrant entered a shelter in Lijiang, Yunnan province, with a lighter and caused a fire. The vagrant died in the incident.

Zou also asked staff members to start looking for relatives quickly. "Staff must identify them and make concerted efforts to help people return home," he said.

According to the ministry, about 3 million to 4 million people seek help at shelters every year.

In 2014, 244,800 mentally ill people received help, a rise of 33.19 percent from 2013.

"The majority of these people lack self-recognition; they easily get stuck in shelters for a long time. This presents a challenge for the shelters' management," Zou said.

He said that the number of missing seniors suffering from Alzheimer's disease has also increased. "They are unable to provide personal information," he said. Some shelters have made great efforts to help people reunite with their families.

Shelter staffs in Shanghai and Dalian, Liaoning province, have collected DNA samples with the help of the police, established files on homeless people and publicized cases on social media, successfully matching many missing people and helping them return home.

"Some shelters accepted missing seniors and transferred them to nursing homes within a few hours, even without taking basic information, and were unable to provide any details to families who were looking for them," Zou said.

The ministry also wants standardized nursing home information to be collated, and urged staff to manage different kinds of vagrants carefully. They should also improve their fire safety systems, the ministry said.

Wang Jinhua, head of the ministry's social work department, said the ministry will check shelters randomly in 2016, and guarantee basic rights for those forced to live rough.

This year in Shaanxi province an elderly man with Alzheimer's disease was transferred to a nursing home immediately after going to a homeless shelter. The shelter failed to take his details, and he died in the home without his family.

luowangshu@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 11/11/2015 page5)