Street kids finding love at shelter
(China Daily)
Updated: 2005-03-19 05:30

When 9-year-old Chengcheng bid farewell to the Baoji Street Children Relief and Protection Centre in February 2005, his guardians were sure of the parentless boy's readiness to face a new life.

Nobody knew for certain where Chengcheng was from or who his parents were.

He was found on a street corner in Baoji in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province in early 2001, and was sent to the newly established centre, co-sponsored by the Baoji Civil Affairs Bureau and the Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). MSF is an international non-governmental organization committed to humanitarian emergency relief efforts.

"I was reluctant to let him go, but we have to find a proper arrangement for the boy," says Lu Xiaohua, a special educator at the centre. "He was homeless. And, our centre can only serve as a temporary harbour for children."

In fact, says Lu, the Baoji centre is designed to prepare street kids for challenges in life rather than finding them a home. That's why the staff had no doubt that Chengcheng, after four years at the centre, would be able to adapt to a new setting.

Therapeutic community

Chengcheng is one of 350-plus children who have been sheltered at the Baoji centre since its launch in 2001. MSF chose Baoji, a three-hour drive to the west of Xi'an, Shaanxi's capital, to base its first facility for street children because the railway hub in Northwest China seemed to be a "resort" for waifs in the region.

Some 56.7 per cent of the kids received by the centre are from neighbouring Gansu and Shanxi provinces and the Xinjiang Uygur and Ningxia Hui autonomous regions, some having travelled thousands of miles before arriving at the site.

Different from most of the 140 facilities for street kids across China, the centre "does not intend to set concrete goals for them, such as going back to their families, or finding a trade or school for them," says Dr Anita Wang, MSF field co-ordinator. "We are committed to managing short-term crisis intervention for children in danger to allow them to become resilient and build optimism and face the challenges of life."

In many cases, sending the children back home doesn't necessarily resolve their problems. Most come from families in poverty, which refuse to have anything to do with the children, simply driving them away from home again, says Wang. That's what 14-year-old Mingming has experienced.

An illegitimate son of a married man named Li and a 16-year-old girl in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Mingming was sold to the Wangs in Fufeng County of Baoji in 1992. In February 2002, the Wangs refused to foster Mingming any longer and sent him back to Li, now a father of several children. But the boy ran away two days later after a family quarrel. He lived on doing chores at the railway station until he was admitted into the centre.

Living with humiliation and indignity since his early childhood, Mingming, a boy of few words, has suffered from neuroses.

"Rejected by two families, where is the boy to go?" asks Wang. "Even if Mingming's own father agrees to bring him up and arrange hukou (household residence registration) for him, is he able to stay long in that strange family, when he feels no sense of identification at all?"

In this regard, Wang advocates the concept of "therapeutic community," in which the community should play a role in taking care of children like Mingming. Meanwhile, the centre tries to teach the children how to protect themselves.

"They should know where to go for help after leaving the centre," says Wang.

For this purpose, MSF has recruited professionals of different backgrounds: two psychologists, eight special educators, two teachers, a nurse, six logistics personnel, plus three social workers from the Baoji Civil Affairs Bureau. Together, they constitute an interdependent team, with the psychologists at its core.

The children end up on the street mainly due to broken families, illnesses, harsh social changes and natural disasters, says Wang.

Every waif has a miserable story to tell, and most of them suffer psychological trauma after having long been isolated from their true families.

Psychological trauma

"I've wandered around straying in society for two years. I feel insecure and I thirst for family life," sighs Feifei, a 15-year-old boy from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. He has travelled half of the country since he lost contact with his father in Urumqi.

Francoise Oppenot, an MSF psychoanalyst, oversees a comprehensive programme that covers a physical, social and mental programme deemed vital to the children's recovery, to help such children adjust.

"In the first stage, we build up a sense of trust for the children through face-to-face talks, through group therapy or family visits," she says.

"For the reticent children, I don't impose too many questions. They are asked to present their stories freely or simply draw a painting, which reflects their innermost feelings."

She says the most important is observation, "through which I can see if there is a deeply-rooted personality problem with the child behind the trauma, followed by a tailor-made discovery programme."

Apart from the psychological support to the children, Oppenot also organizes workshops for the staff, normally twice a month, which help teach approaches to reach children and get things moving.

The theme for this year's workshops is adolescence.

For staff members at the centre, protecting the rights of the children is the foremost rule. This is permeated in the centre from external layout to staff discipline

Staff members are also forbidden to smoke in front of the children.

"I really felt a bit annoyed at first when I had to go to the smoking area at the end of the corridor," says Ning Bo, one of the seven smokers on the staff. "But gradually I got used to it - it's good for the children's healthy growth, right?"

From these rules, says Li Yanni, a social worker from the Baoji Civil Affairs Bureau, "I learned to respect the children's rights rather than force them to do what we want them to." Li Wei, a special educator at the centre, also approves of MSF attaching importance to the children's psychological health and its dealing with each case individually and as carefully as possible.

For 12-year-old Juanjuan, whose family broke up after her father indulged in gambling and disappeared, the centre is more than a temporary home. "Here I have learned to rely on myself," she says with a smile. Painting a five-colored flower on a white sheet, she says she feels her future will be "promising." Quite a few civil affairs officials and legal experts in Beijing share the MSF concept of community support to pool wisdom and efforts to try to eliminate and curb the root causes of children wandering.

Wang Shuying, an official with the Ministry of Civil Affairs, says community support is an effective method in Western countries.

Feng Rui, a professor of criminal law at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, also points out that community intervention in protecting children's rights is important, saying for those children who are unwilling to go back to their broken families, the community must take over the guardianship. But in practice there are still questions with regard to legally protecting the country's street children.

For instance, the local government disapproves of the centre staff going out to search for street urchins throughout Baoji and bringing them to the centre. This outreach practice, some officials say, is against the "voluntary" principle stipulated in the Measures on Aid and Management for Urban Vagrants and Beggars issued in 2003.

Legal protection

According to the regulation, wanderers should go and seek help at local salvation stations on a voluntary basis. But it does not specify how minors should be handled. Wang Shuying of the Ministry of Civil Affairs agrees that adult and minor wanderers should be treated separately, as the latter group is more vulnerable. But that requires substantial legal support.

Fortunately, says Feng Rui, the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, is planning to consolidate legislation for the protection of minors.

The Law on the Protection of Minors, put into effect in 1992, is undergoing revision.

"The law, hopefully to be submitted to the National People's Congress for deliberation next year, will give priority to children's rights and interests in the light of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child," Feng says.

Lu Shizhen, professor with Beijing-based China Youth University for Political Sciences, says the revised law will provide substantive protection by clearly defining the liabilities of subjects with regard to the safety and security of children.

This makes Anita Wang of the MSF feel things are more hopeful. "We've seen the light at the end of the tunnel," she says. "My wish is that all the Chinese parents would treat their children as 'somebody' who is a source of happiness, rather than 'something' that generates practical value."

(China Daily 03/19/2005 page3)