论文部分内容阅读
MOST of China’s lay population learn about the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) through its projects in the country’s disaster-affected or poor rural areas. People are also acquainted with UNICEF China through its publicity activities, and Goodwill Ambassadors such as popular film stars Maggie Cheung and Chen Kun and celebrated broadcast journalist Yang Lan.
The history of UNICEF’s collaboration with China can be traced back to 1947, when China entered a partnership with UNICEF to provide children with emergency relief services. In its early days (1947-1951) in China– the first country outside of Europe in which UNICEF worked – the organization also helped provide training on maternal and child health care, sanitation and first aid, so laying foundations for China’s “barefoot doctor”rural healthcare system. In 1979, UNICEF began its modern-era cooperation with China, and has since contributed greatly to the country’s significant developments that are geared specifically to children.
For a closer look at how UNICEF has worked in partnership with the central government in addressing the needs of children in China and promoting protection of children’s rights, China Today sat down with Gillian Mellsop, UNICEF Representative to China, for an exclusive interview.
Model strategies, Commendable Achievements
Statistical data show that in 2010 the Chinese population living below the poverty line had fallen 2.8 percent to 26.88 million from the 1978 level of 250 million. The coverage of China’s nine-year compulsory education is now 99 percent – a formidable advance bearing in mind that, only 60 years ago, 80 percent of Chinese people were illiterate. What’s more, by the end of 2011, 95 percent of China’s 1.3 billion population, including children, had basic medical insurance cover.
When talking about China’s achievements in the protection of children’s rights and improvements in children’s living conditions, Ms. Mellsop said, “China is the role model for the rest of the world in this regard, and has made incredible progress in the last 30 years.”
UNICEF’s work with the Chinese government has contributed to this impressive progress. “Maternal and child health is one of the best examples of pilot projects that UNICEF has supported,” Ms. Mellsop told China Today. In the 1980s and 90s, there was still a relatively high rate of maternal mortality in China due to lack of access to proper health care. According to Ms. Mellsop, the program that UNICEF helped pioneer to encourage rural mothers to deliver their babies in hospitals almost halved maternal mortality. Today the Ministry of Health has scaled-up the UNICEF approach to support all of China’s rural poverty counties. Owing to the national program, to which central finance authorities allocate billions of RMB annually, all pregnant rural women are now eligible for free checkups and hospital deliveries.
In the 1980s, UNICEF also helped the Ministry of Health to expand child vaccination programs. At that time, most of China’s remote areas lacked refrigeration for safe storage and transport of vaccines. UNICEF helped establish a cold-chain network. This significantly improved China’s immunization program, leading to a dramatic drop in child mortality from diseases like measles, polio and tuberculosis that vaccinations can prevent.
Focus on the Most Disadvantaged Children
“As a United Nations agency and a leading global organization working on children’s issues, UNICEF works with the Chinese government to enhance China’s capacity to extend basic and essential services to children in the most remote and disadvantaged communities by developing demonstration models and approaches,” Ms. Mellsop told China Today. “We focus on the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children.”
Child protection is one of the key aims of UNICEF China, according to Ms. Mellsop. “The Chinese government is doing its utmost to provide a welfare system to ensure that the most vulnerable children have the same opportunities as those more fortunate to develop their full potential. We work closely with the government in piloting a child welfare system and in devising different approaches to developing it,” Ms. Mellsop said.
The child welfare system to which she refers is being piloted through the “Child Welfare Demonstration Project,”jointly launched in May 2010 by the Ministry of Civil Affairs(MCA) and UNICEF China. The project aims to pioneer a child welfare system model in 120 villages in Sichuan, Henan, Yunnan and Shanxi provinces and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
Under the project, child welfare directors have been recruited and child welfare centers established in local commu- nities to help monitor the situations of particularly vulnerable children, including orphans and children who live without parental care and in HIVaffected families. The new approach explores ways of working with village child welfare directors to collect data on vulnerable children that will enable the government to provide assistance based on their special needs. In 2010 China’s central authorities allocated RMB 2.5 billion to provide vulnerable children with special subsidies and living allowances. The Child Welfare Demonstration Project aims to develop a community-based system to administrate subsidies and ensure that orphans and other vulnerable children get care and support from their immediate family, relatives and the community.
“We first piloted the model for children affected by HIV, and it has now been extended to all vulnerable children,” Ms. Mellsop told China Today. “If a child cannot be cared for by his or her parents for various reasons, he or she should receive community-based family support rather than institutional care. International research shows that this is best for children’s development, and also more cost-effective than institutional care.”
Since 2001, UNICEF China has also been cooperating with the Ministry of Civil Affairs and China Disabled Persons’Federation to promote community-based family care and to prevent abandonment of disabled children. UNICEF is also working with its partners to promote the development of poli-cies for strengthening social security and child welfare services for children with disabilities. This includes work to expand coverage of the current Policy for Strengthening Social Protection for Orphans to include children with disabilities. These policies aim to ensure that financial support and communitybased services are provided to children with disabilities and their families.
Ms. Mellsop spoke of a pilot project that UNICEF and its government partners started about 10 years ago whereby families in Yibin of Sichuan Province foster disabled children. “When I visited that village I was impressed to see that these children were much loved members of their foster families. A loving family environment provides the best care possible for children, and is the model many countries are now using, especially as research shows that orphanages are not the best environment,”Ms. Mellsop said. She went on to say that the government is carrying out trials of the family-based foster care model for disabled children in other parts of China.
UNICEF and the MCA are now piloting programs in Gansu, Heilongjiang and Sichuan provinces to establish communitybased day care centers for children with disabilities. These centers will provide rehabilitation services, psychological support, learning opportunities and care advice to such children and their biological or foster families.
tackling the toughest Challenges
“One of the most serious and challenging child rights issues China faces is the impact of migration on children,” Ms. Mellsop told China Today. She pointed out that one in every four children in China is affected by migration, with 55 million children left at home by parents pursuing work opportunities out of town and 27 million children accompanying their migrant-worker parents to new communities.
According to Ms. Mellsop, UNICEF has been helping authorities in certain urban areas to develop the capacity to register migrant children in their cities and to plan and administrate essential social services. The UNICEF-supported pilot projects to register migrant children are being carried out in partnership with local governments in Wuxi of Jiangsu Province, Shijiazhuang of Hebei Province and Beijing.
Registering basic information on migrant children can help local governments provide better education and health care resources. For example, many migrant parents overlook vaccinations for their children due to being constantly on the move and lack of awareness.
Through the UNICEF-supported Child Immunization Registry and Information System, local health workers are able to trace the vaccination history of migrant children in project districts. Migrant children in project areas are registered with the local Migration Administration Office, and their information entitling them to receive free vaccinations is shared with local health authorities.
For left-behind children living with their grandparents or extended family members, UNICEF is working in cooperation with government partners to pilot Child Friendly Spaces that provide children with psychosocial support and caregivers with child care information, Ms. Mellsop said.
“After the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, UNICEF introduced its international expertise for supporting disasteraffected children by developing ‘Child Friendly Spaces’ where children experiencing psychosocial stress could receive the special care and support they needed,” Ms. Mellsop told China Today. Over time, these Child Friendly Spaces have developed into a widely recognized model of special services for vulnerable children with special needs, including those affected by migration. Today, the Child Friendly Spaces concept has been integrated into China’s National Plan of Action for Children.
Investments with High Returns
Early childhood development is another focus of UNICEF China. “International research shows that one dollar invested in early childhood development brings a return of at least seven dollars. It is hence the best investment a government can make,” Ms. Mellsop said. “Children that have quality childhood education do better at school and are more productive when they join the workforce,” she added.
Chinese authorities have recognized the value of early childhood development, and integrated pre-school education into the national education system. The government’s plan is that by 2020, every child in China between the ages of three and six will have access to pre-school education.
UNICEF has been working with the Chinese government for years to demonstrate the benefits and results of quality early childhood development programs. “We’re modeling public pre-school education and supporting careful evaluation, and passing on these inputs to the State Council,” Ms. Mellsop said. Moreover, “UNICEF’s work has contributed to the State Council’s decision to roll out its plan to achieve universal preschool education by the year 2020.”
UNICEF’s early childhood development pilot projects have four main focuses. They are: helping to train teachers and develop a “resource package” to support teachers in the classroom; contributing to the development of guidelines to monitor the quality of pre-schools and kindergartens; helping develop innovative community-based programs to educate parents about early childhood development; and providing technical support.
When talking about the fierce competition that today’s mainly single urban Chinese children face, owing to the high expectations of their parents and grandparents, Mrs. Mellsop commented, “Parents are mistaken in forcing their children to master academic skills and memorize mountains of factual information at a very young age. There is increasing evidence that children who are allowed to play, explore their environment and develop social skills perform better academically by the fifth or sixth grade of primary school.”
“The UNICEF education team is working with the Ministry of Education on social and emotional learning. We have piloted the Child Friendly School approach that looks at different ways teachers can work with children to help them develop their full potential,” Ms. Mellsop said.
The Child Friendly School pilot projects conducted by UNICEF in cooperation with its partners aim to make the learning environment safer, happier, more interactive and participatory. Currently, UNICEF is focusing on monitoring and improving the social and emotional well-being of all students, developing improved classroom teaching and learning methods, providing a mobile educational resource support system for teachers in schools in more remote areas, and helping build capacity for school management through enhanced education management information systems.
“I feel really optimistic about the future of Chinese children in spite of certain challenges. A society’s endowment on its children is an investment in its future. I can see that the Chinese government is committed to empowering its children,”Ms. Mellsop said.
Ms. Mellsop concluded her interview with China Today by saying, “I feel very privileged to be working in China for UNICEF at this stage of China’s development, given the great range of new ideas and policies that will achieve results for children and give them more opportunities to develop their full potential.”
The history of UNICEF’s collaboration with China can be traced back to 1947, when China entered a partnership with UNICEF to provide children with emergency relief services. In its early days (1947-1951) in China– the first country outside of Europe in which UNICEF worked – the organization also helped provide training on maternal and child health care, sanitation and first aid, so laying foundations for China’s “barefoot doctor”rural healthcare system. In 1979, UNICEF began its modern-era cooperation with China, and has since contributed greatly to the country’s significant developments that are geared specifically to children.
For a closer look at how UNICEF has worked in partnership with the central government in addressing the needs of children in China and promoting protection of children’s rights, China Today sat down with Gillian Mellsop, UNICEF Representative to China, for an exclusive interview.
Model strategies, Commendable Achievements
Statistical data show that in 2010 the Chinese population living below the poverty line had fallen 2.8 percent to 26.88 million from the 1978 level of 250 million. The coverage of China’s nine-year compulsory education is now 99 percent – a formidable advance bearing in mind that, only 60 years ago, 80 percent of Chinese people were illiterate. What’s more, by the end of 2011, 95 percent of China’s 1.3 billion population, including children, had basic medical insurance cover.
When talking about China’s achievements in the protection of children’s rights and improvements in children’s living conditions, Ms. Mellsop said, “China is the role model for the rest of the world in this regard, and has made incredible progress in the last 30 years.”
UNICEF’s work with the Chinese government has contributed to this impressive progress. “Maternal and child health is one of the best examples of pilot projects that UNICEF has supported,” Ms. Mellsop told China Today. In the 1980s and 90s, there was still a relatively high rate of maternal mortality in China due to lack of access to proper health care. According to Ms. Mellsop, the program that UNICEF helped pioneer to encourage rural mothers to deliver their babies in hospitals almost halved maternal mortality. Today the Ministry of Health has scaled-up the UNICEF approach to support all of China’s rural poverty counties. Owing to the national program, to which central finance authorities allocate billions of RMB annually, all pregnant rural women are now eligible for free checkups and hospital deliveries.
In the 1980s, UNICEF also helped the Ministry of Health to expand child vaccination programs. At that time, most of China’s remote areas lacked refrigeration for safe storage and transport of vaccines. UNICEF helped establish a cold-chain network. This significantly improved China’s immunization program, leading to a dramatic drop in child mortality from diseases like measles, polio and tuberculosis that vaccinations can prevent.
Focus on the Most Disadvantaged Children
“As a United Nations agency and a leading global organization working on children’s issues, UNICEF works with the Chinese government to enhance China’s capacity to extend basic and essential services to children in the most remote and disadvantaged communities by developing demonstration models and approaches,” Ms. Mellsop told China Today. “We focus on the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children.”
Child protection is one of the key aims of UNICEF China, according to Ms. Mellsop. “The Chinese government is doing its utmost to provide a welfare system to ensure that the most vulnerable children have the same opportunities as those more fortunate to develop their full potential. We work closely with the government in piloting a child welfare system and in devising different approaches to developing it,” Ms. Mellsop said.
The child welfare system to which she refers is being piloted through the “Child Welfare Demonstration Project,”jointly launched in May 2010 by the Ministry of Civil Affairs(MCA) and UNICEF China. The project aims to pioneer a child welfare system model in 120 villages in Sichuan, Henan, Yunnan and Shanxi provinces and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
Under the project, child welfare directors have been recruited and child welfare centers established in local commu- nities to help monitor the situations of particularly vulnerable children, including orphans and children who live without parental care and in HIVaffected families. The new approach explores ways of working with village child welfare directors to collect data on vulnerable children that will enable the government to provide assistance based on their special needs. In 2010 China’s central authorities allocated RMB 2.5 billion to provide vulnerable children with special subsidies and living allowances. The Child Welfare Demonstration Project aims to develop a community-based system to administrate subsidies and ensure that orphans and other vulnerable children get care and support from their immediate family, relatives and the community.
“We first piloted the model for children affected by HIV, and it has now been extended to all vulnerable children,” Ms. Mellsop told China Today. “If a child cannot be cared for by his or her parents for various reasons, he or she should receive community-based family support rather than institutional care. International research shows that this is best for children’s development, and also more cost-effective than institutional care.”
Since 2001, UNICEF China has also been cooperating with the Ministry of Civil Affairs and China Disabled Persons’Federation to promote community-based family care and to prevent abandonment of disabled children. UNICEF is also working with its partners to promote the development of poli-cies for strengthening social security and child welfare services for children with disabilities. This includes work to expand coverage of the current Policy for Strengthening Social Protection for Orphans to include children with disabilities. These policies aim to ensure that financial support and communitybased services are provided to children with disabilities and their families.
Ms. Mellsop spoke of a pilot project that UNICEF and its government partners started about 10 years ago whereby families in Yibin of Sichuan Province foster disabled children. “When I visited that village I was impressed to see that these children were much loved members of their foster families. A loving family environment provides the best care possible for children, and is the model many countries are now using, especially as research shows that orphanages are not the best environment,”Ms. Mellsop said. She went on to say that the government is carrying out trials of the family-based foster care model for disabled children in other parts of China.
UNICEF and the MCA are now piloting programs in Gansu, Heilongjiang and Sichuan provinces to establish communitybased day care centers for children with disabilities. These centers will provide rehabilitation services, psychological support, learning opportunities and care advice to such children and their biological or foster families.
tackling the toughest Challenges
“One of the most serious and challenging child rights issues China faces is the impact of migration on children,” Ms. Mellsop told China Today. She pointed out that one in every four children in China is affected by migration, with 55 million children left at home by parents pursuing work opportunities out of town and 27 million children accompanying their migrant-worker parents to new communities.
According to Ms. Mellsop, UNICEF has been helping authorities in certain urban areas to develop the capacity to register migrant children in their cities and to plan and administrate essential social services. The UNICEF-supported pilot projects to register migrant children are being carried out in partnership with local governments in Wuxi of Jiangsu Province, Shijiazhuang of Hebei Province and Beijing.
Registering basic information on migrant children can help local governments provide better education and health care resources. For example, many migrant parents overlook vaccinations for their children due to being constantly on the move and lack of awareness.
Through the UNICEF-supported Child Immunization Registry and Information System, local health workers are able to trace the vaccination history of migrant children in project districts. Migrant children in project areas are registered with the local Migration Administration Office, and their information entitling them to receive free vaccinations is shared with local health authorities.
For left-behind children living with their grandparents or extended family members, UNICEF is working in cooperation with government partners to pilot Child Friendly Spaces that provide children with psychosocial support and caregivers with child care information, Ms. Mellsop said.
“After the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, UNICEF introduced its international expertise for supporting disasteraffected children by developing ‘Child Friendly Spaces’ where children experiencing psychosocial stress could receive the special care and support they needed,” Ms. Mellsop told China Today. Over time, these Child Friendly Spaces have developed into a widely recognized model of special services for vulnerable children with special needs, including those affected by migration. Today, the Child Friendly Spaces concept has been integrated into China’s National Plan of Action for Children.
Investments with High Returns
Early childhood development is another focus of UNICEF China. “International research shows that one dollar invested in early childhood development brings a return of at least seven dollars. It is hence the best investment a government can make,” Ms. Mellsop said. “Children that have quality childhood education do better at school and are more productive when they join the workforce,” she added.
Chinese authorities have recognized the value of early childhood development, and integrated pre-school education into the national education system. The government’s plan is that by 2020, every child in China between the ages of three and six will have access to pre-school education.
UNICEF has been working with the Chinese government for years to demonstrate the benefits and results of quality early childhood development programs. “We’re modeling public pre-school education and supporting careful evaluation, and passing on these inputs to the State Council,” Ms. Mellsop said. Moreover, “UNICEF’s work has contributed to the State Council’s decision to roll out its plan to achieve universal preschool education by the year 2020.”
UNICEF’s early childhood development pilot projects have four main focuses. They are: helping to train teachers and develop a “resource package” to support teachers in the classroom; contributing to the development of guidelines to monitor the quality of pre-schools and kindergartens; helping develop innovative community-based programs to educate parents about early childhood development; and providing technical support.
When talking about the fierce competition that today’s mainly single urban Chinese children face, owing to the high expectations of their parents and grandparents, Mrs. Mellsop commented, “Parents are mistaken in forcing their children to master academic skills and memorize mountains of factual information at a very young age. There is increasing evidence that children who are allowed to play, explore their environment and develop social skills perform better academically by the fifth or sixth grade of primary school.”
“The UNICEF education team is working with the Ministry of Education on social and emotional learning. We have piloted the Child Friendly School approach that looks at different ways teachers can work with children to help them develop their full potential,” Ms. Mellsop said.
The Child Friendly School pilot projects conducted by UNICEF in cooperation with its partners aim to make the learning environment safer, happier, more interactive and participatory. Currently, UNICEF is focusing on monitoring and improving the social and emotional well-being of all students, developing improved classroom teaching and learning methods, providing a mobile educational resource support system for teachers in schools in more remote areas, and helping build capacity for school management through enhanced education management information systems.
“I feel really optimistic about the future of Chinese children in spite of certain challenges. A society’s endowment on its children is an investment in its future. I can see that the Chinese government is committed to empowering its children,”Ms. Mellsop said.
Ms. Mellsop concluded her interview with China Today by saying, “I feel very privileged to be working in China for UNICEF at this stage of China’s development, given the great range of new ideas and policies that will achieve results for children and give them more opportunities to develop their full potential.”