The role of international non-governmental organizations in service delivery for orphans and abandoned children in China

Abstract

This article examines the role of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) in social welfare provision in addressing the developmental and material needs of orphans in rural China. Data from qualitative interviews with INGO representatives and state officials were combined with documentary analysis to investigate the ways in which the state and civil society respond to orphans’ needs. It was found that while INGOs are actively contributing to the social provision of orphans, in part reflecting the pluralization of welfare, there is an urgent need for the Chinese government to play a more proactive role in safeguarding the care and protection of one of China’s most vulnerable population groups.

Keywords

China international non-governmental organizations orphans and abandoned children social policy social service

Introduction

Despite achieving spectacular economic growth rates, China’s economic reforms since the 1980s have been accompanied by a wide array of social problems. In particular, the decentralization of welfare has created immense challenges for local governments to deliver adequate social welfare services and support for at-risk children groups, including left-behind children, street children, migrant children, children in poverty, and orphans and abandoned children (Li, 1999; Shang et al., 2009). This is especially true in rural areas, where state welfare provision is typically weaker compared to their urban counterparts (Leung and Xu, 2015). These rising social needs and problems associated with vulnerable groups of children have resulted in the proliferation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) as critical service delivery agents (Keyser, 2009). This article examines the challenges encountered by local governments in the implementation of social welfare services for orphans and abandoned children in rural China, and the role of INGOs in mitigating these challenges.

The landscape for orphans and abandoned children in China

Accounting for 21 percent of its total population, China is now home to approximately 274 million children, defined as individuals under 18 years of age (UNICEF, 2014). Orphans, defined by the state as children whose parents are both deceased, are among these 274 million, although estimates of the actual number of orphans vary significantly according to different sources. In 2005 the first national survey on orphans conducted by the Ministry of Civil Affairs was released. The report revealed that that were 573,000 orphans at the time, 495,000 (86.3%) of whom were living in rural areas. In 2011 this figure increased to 720,000 (Shang, 2011). Contrastingly, an independent study conducted by UNICEF (2008) estimated that there were around 21 million orphans in 2008. The wide discrepancy may be due to different parameters to define ‘orphans’ and also to ambiguous, unstandardized data collection methods (Liu and Zhu, 2009). Nevertheless, the focus of this article is not to contest the number of orphans in China, but rather to examine how the civil society sector delivers social services and advances the welfare for orphans and abandoned children. These can be children whose parents are deceased, or whose parents have abandoned them but are still alive.

One of the most prevalent reasons for infant abandonment in China today is disability, whether physical, mental, or both (Fisher and Shang, 2014), with sources claiming that approximately 100,000 infants with birth defects are abandoned annually (Wu, 2015). The rudimentary state support for children with disabilities and the continuous marginalization and discrimination toward families of children with disabilities (Shang et al., 2009) may have accounted for the gravity of the situation. Children who show visible signs of defect at birth are often victims of abandonment, and the majority of children found in China’s state-run child welfare institutes (CWIs) harbours some form of disability, while those who are healthy are adopted shortly after admission. For many families, their only access to health care is to surrender their child to the state. In Guangzhou alone, an average of five babies were abandoned per day on the ‘baby hatch’ – a safe zone right outside a Guangzhou orphanage where parents can anonymously drop off their babies. This zone was set up in early 2014, and within 6 weeks, 262 children – all seriously ill – were abandoned, and the orphanage was forced to remove the baby hatch as it became overwhelmed (Hatton, 2014). This provides an insight into the alarming number of families struggling to provide care for their children. Other frequently cited reasons for abandonment include poverty, gender biases, HIV/AIDS, parental incarceration, and the general lack of social support and poor child protection policies (Johnson et al., 1998; Liu and Zhu, 2009). Various sociocultural factors, such as preference for boys, and economic factors are further exacerbated by the One Child Policy, which often leads families, especially impoverished households, to make tremendously difficult decisions given only one ‘quota’. Even with the dismantling of the One Child Policy in 2015, families will continue to struggle with providing adequate care for children who are born with birth defects. Unless this move is accompanied by a strengthening of health care provision for children, it is unlikely that a Two Child Policy will have an impact on abandonment rates.

State protection of orphans and abandoned children in China

Before examining the role of INGOs in social service provision for orphans and abandoned children, it is important to provide an overview of China’s child welfare policy context. Like all children in China, orphans are entitled to certain rights and benefits, as stipulated by national policies and legislations, including the Law on Nine-Year Compulsory Education (1986), and the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Protection of Minors (1991). Over the past few decades, the Chinese government has also implemented a series of welfare policies specifically designed to meet the diverse developmental and material needs of orphans. For example, in July 2001, the National Working Committee on Children and Women under the State Council published a national scheme for child development and child welfare (2001–2010) outlining the country’s child welfare and development goals, including its intention to set up a universal child welfare system. Under this national scheme, the government promulgated the Regulations of Foster Care (2003) and revised the Adoption Law of the People’s Republic of China (1991, 2005). In 2009, the Ministry of Civil Affairs also set up a minimum standard of subsidy for orphans in 2009, providing Renminbi RMB 600 monthly for orphans in adopted families and RMB1000 for orphans in state-run CWIs. This was shortly followed by the central’s government promulgation of the policy entitled ‘Opinions on Strengthening the Protection of Orphans’ (State Council, 2010a), which further specified the regulations and arrangements for social welfare provision for orphans, including education, health care, housing and basic living. The Opinions stipulated that the ‘central government should direct, the Ministry of Civil Affairs should lead and facilitate cooperation among government departments, and society at large should participate in the child protection and welfare system’. With the continuous promulgation of various policies such as the Regulations on Child Welfare Institutions (Ministry of Civil Affairs, 2013), the more recent national scheme for child development (2011–2020) further outlined future directions of China’s child welfare development over the next decade (State Council, 2010b).

While these policies are applied nationally, state responses to orphans differ in other policy areas based on China’s rural–urban dichotomy and one’s corresponding hukou (household registration). For example, while orphans living in urban areas are entitled to the Minimum Living Standard scheme, which provides financial assistance for the urban poor, orphans living in rural areas are much less protected, even with the implementation of wubao – a rural welfare policy that provides assistance to disadvantaged individuals, defined as those without income, without capability to care for themselves, and without any person legally responsible for their well-being (Shang and Katz, 2014). Another example is health care, whereby orphans in urban areas receive benefits from the Urban Resident Basic Medical Insurance while those in rural areas receive benefits from the Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme.

In many of China’s rural areas, local state welfare provision is typically poorer compared to urban counterparts (Wu, 2011). Indeed, drawing from this research, it was evident that rural governments simply did not have sufficient financial and human resources or the necessary expert knowledge to provide adequate care and protection for orphans and abandoned children. This has in part resulted from the decentralization of welfare that occurred in tandem with economic reforms in the late 1970s, whereby the central government relinquished many of its previously held welfare responsibilities to local states (Leung and Xu, 2015). At the same time, impoverished rural households were found to struggle tremendously to make ends meet, with many households failing to pay for even minimum necessities such as food and clothing for children.

While the majority of orphans and abandoned children in China are still cared for by extended family members (Shang and Wu, 2005), the Chinese government intervenes and provides institutional care for orphans in the absence of kinship care. Orphans receiving institutional care are either placed in social welfare institutions (SWIs), which house other residents such as the elderly and people with disabilities, or child-exclusive welfare institutions. These are known as CWIs. The Ministry of Civil Affairs (2014) reported that there were 529 CWIs in 2013, and that approximately 94,000 children were placed in institutional care; and foreseeing greater demands for institutional-based care, the government has also recently announced its intention to build a CWI at every prefecture-level over the next decade. Foster care is also gaining currency as a care model, with official figures indicating that around 24,460 children were living in family foster homes in 2013 (Ministry of Civil Affairs, 2014).

Despite the Chinese government’s continuous efforts to improve the welfare of orphans, the reality is that problems concerning these children are often so complex that the government alone may not be capable of mitigating them, especially in light of a fragmented welfare state (Duckett, 2011). Unlike other areas such as pension or health care reforms, which may be at least partially ‘resolved’ or understood in market terms (e.g. individual adults can purchase private health care insurance or different types of retirement protection products), child welfare and social service provision for orphans and abandoned children entail far more complex arrangements between multiple agencies, and between the state and non-state actors (Keyser, 2009), with children having little say in determining their own preferences in terms of service needs. Where local state capacity is poor and where extended family members are absent or unable to help facilitate the decision-making process on matters concerning the child, the emergence of both local NGOs and INGOs represents an alternative avenue in which the predicaments of orphans and abandoned children can be addressed.

The role of NGOs in social service delivery for orphans and abandoned children in China

It has been well-established that NGOs play an important role in service delivery in both developed and developing countries. While NGOs in most democratic states have considerable agency to hold their governments accountable for policy implementation and also to participate in policy decision-making processes, the role of NGOs in authoritative states, such as China, is much more contentious (Harwin and Barron, 2007). Nevertheless, the influence of INGOs and NGOs in China’s social service sector is almost impossible to ignore. Since early 2000, foreign foundations, INGOs and aid agencies have contributed millions of dollars annually to support a variety of causes (Spires, 2012), ranging from human rights, social service provision, environmental protection, political activism, to capacity-building for local NGOs. While a number of these NGOs and INGOs are legally registered in China, the vast majority of both INGOs and NGOs operate without a legal status, or without any regulatory oversight in practice (Deng, 2010; High, 2013; Hsia and White III, 2002).

In the child welfare sector, INGOs and international foundations such as Save the Children (United Kingdom), Oxfam Hong Kong, Plan International, SOS Children’s Villages, UNICEF, Half the Sky Foundation, and other faith-based organizations, both domestic and international ones, have had a strong visible presence in China, working in collaboration with the national government to promote the advancement of children’s rights, and delivering particular services for children in areas including education, medical care, children’s rights, capacity-training and HIV/AIDS at local levels. INGOs have also imported novel service delivery and care models, such as that of foster care, which was pioneered by the founders of Prince of Peace and introduced to China in the early 1990s (High, 2013).

The influence of INGOs and other non-state actors has not gone unnoticed by the Chinese government. In the national scheme for child development and child welfare (2011–2020), the government put renewed emphasis on the need for societal actors to participate in the child welfare system. Articles 5, 6 and 7 under the ‘strategic implementation’ section explicitly mentioned the need for relevant government departments to join hands with social organizations in tackling child welfare problems, and to use ‘innovative and effective’ methods to advance child welfare, including ‘developing international knowledge exchange platforms and collaborations in order to learn from more advanced concepts and skills pertaining to child welfare and child development’. The scheme further encouraged the implementation of programmes and services with societal actors that can serve as model examples for others.

Foster homes, service provision, and orphanages operated by INGOs, faith-based organizations, or private individuals are, de facto, part of China’s child welfare and orphan care system, and yet there have been no official estimates on the number of these organizations, their locations and scope, or the number of children beneficiaries. As High (2013) asserted, the role of civil society actors in China’s child welfare system has garnered little attention in existing scholarship, even though their impact has been anecdotally prolific. As such, this article examines the challenges encountered by local governments in the implementation of welfare services for orphans and abandoned children in rural China, and the role of INGOs in mitigating them, in the hope of contributing to our understanding of the relationship between civil society and child welfare and orphan care advancement in China.

Method

Purposeful sampling was used to select three international child welfare NGOs operating in rural China as case studies (Yin, 2013) (see Table 1). Using three case studies allowed for shared themes related to child welfare challenges to emerge, even though the child population they serve has unique characteristics. Within each of these case studies, we used a combination of in-depth interviews with representatives of INGOs and government officials who work with these INGOs, documentary analysis, and field notes. All participants met the following inclusion criteria: (1) being an INGO representative or state official and (2) having at least 3 years of experience working with the orphans and abandoned children population in rural China. Having acquired participants’ informed consent, they were asked in semi-structured interviews to identify current shortcomings in terms of service gaps for orphans and abandoned children, and to describe how INGOs are mitigating these service gaps. All interviews, conducted by the author, took place between July and December 2013, and were recorded, and transcribed verbatim. Thematic analysis was used to identify emergent patterns and themes (Braun and Clark, 2006), which in turn become categories for analysis. An a priori template pertaining to welfare service challenges was constructed but was subject to revision throughout the coding process. Thus, emergent themes were identified from the collected data and subsequently categorized and coded according to the coding template. This was followed by a further distillation of concepts using axial coding in order to encapsulate their meanings.

Table 1.

Three case studies of child welfare INGOs operating in rural China.

Name^a	Target recipient	Service area	Operating area	Estimated beneficiaries
INGO A	Orphans	Education and basic living	Rural Sichuan	14,000 children
INGO B	Orphans	Special needs therapy, health care, foster care, and vocational training	Rural Xinjiang	460 children, 200 CWIs
INGO C	Orphans affected by HIV/AIDS	Advocacy, health care, education, and living expenses	Rural Henan, Yunnan	9200 children

INGO: international non-governmental organization; HIV/AIDS: human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome; CWI: child welfare institute.

The names of INGOs are made anonymous to protect confidentiality.

Findings

Three child welfare INGOs participated in this study, referred hereafter as INGO A, INGO B, and INGO C. INGO A, a Hong Kong-based INGO with ties to Canada, works in the education sector in rural Sichuan to provide education opportunities for orphans and abandoned children. INGO B, a UK-based INGO, operates in rural Xinjiang to provide foster care, special needs therapy, and vocational training for local child welfare institutions. Finally, INGO C, a Hong Kong-based INGO, operates in rural Henan and Yunnan, and provides health care, financial, and education resources for orphans and abandoned children affected by HIV/AIDS. Interviews conducted with representatives of these three INGOs and government officials offered insights into some of the challenges encountered at local levels in the welfare policy and service implementation process. Themes across the three cases emerged in the analysis, grouped under the codes welfare entitlement/birth registration, central–local mismatch, administrative capacity, and professionalization and infrastructure.

Welfare entitlement/birth registration

Welfare entitlement and birth registration was a recurrent theme that emerged from the data. In China, social welfare benefits are intricately tied to one’s residence status within the hukou system (Wong et al., 2007). However, in County X in Rural Sichuan, it was found that some children did not have hukou, meaning that they were not registered at birth. This may be attributed to the long distances required to travel between their homes and township centres. However, the absence of hukou carries serious implications for the welfare of orphans and abandoned children. First, it disqualified these children from receiving proper financial support (e.g. wubao). Second, because these children were not even accounted for in the public system, it was impossible for the government to allocate a sufficient amount of resources to provide assistance to these children. Third, not only were these orphans and abandoned children barred from receiving financial aid, they were also ineligible for other critical developmental resources such as education and medical care.

Inconsistent parameters in defining ‘orphans’ have also prevented abandoned children from receiving state support. To illustrate the severity of this issue, one representative of INGO A revealed that the ‘list of orphans’ reported by the local Ministry of Civil Affairs differed significantly from the same list recorded by the Education Bureau, suggesting poor intergovernmental coordination and the lack of consensus in defining what constituted the term ‘orphan’. To the extent that only 10 percent of children corroborated across these two lists, it was evident that the verification and identification process – which directly relates to welfare entitlement and the subsequent welfare budgeting and welfare provision – still lacked systemization and sophistication. Many abandoned children had parents whose circumstances and whereabouts were unknown. However, without proper death certifications, these children did not technically qualify as actual orphans, which the local Ministry of Civil Affairs defined as children whose both parents are deceased. Without state support, these children were then left in precarious situations, especially in the absence of extended family members.

Clearly, inaccurate data also presented challenges for INGOs in the assessment, planning, and delivering of social services for orphans and abandoned children at local levels. In response to these challenges, it was found that INGOs have assisted local governments in developing a more rigorous data collection system to verify the identity of children. INGO A, for example, sent their own staff alongside government officials on a yearly basis to document and verify the identities of children in the villages and helps keep a systemized record of them. There were also cases where the whereabouts of both parents of a child were unknown, or where the child in question was not registered at birth. In these instances where the child was not qualified to receive state support, INGO A stepped in to provide education opportunities and financial subsidies for these ‘unverified’ orphans or abandoned children. We can see here that in light of existing challenges relating to welfare entitlement and registration, INGO A was able to import various data collection methods to improve the transparency and planning of the local service delivery system, and to fill in the welfare gap for some of these orphans and abandoned children when the local state could not.

Together, these observations suggest that the system of identification and verification of beneficiaries and the determination of the number of eligible beneficiaries were still thwarted with inconsistency and loopholes. More importantly, it revealed the extent of local discretion in reporting the number of beneficiaries (orphans). Whether intended or not, the lack of systematized data can lead to poor welfare budgeting and planning for both the state and civil society actors. These findings corroborated with a study conducted by Overbye (2005), who found that the lack of formal or reliable income registers in China allowed street-level bureaucrats discretionary powers to gather and report (mis)information. Even though INGOs can partially assist local governments with developing the technology and skills necessary for sound methodological tools, they cannot offset the risks of administrative abuses (e.g. underreporting or inflating the number of orphans to secure funding).

Central–local mismatch

Fiscal mismatch between local governments and higher authorities created substantial challenges for local governments to provide adequate social services for orphans and abandoned children in all three cases. During this research, it was found that while the central government shifted welfare responsibilities to local governments and funds only around 50 percent of the financial subsidies for orphans, local governments are then required to match the fund by contributing 50 percent of the rest of the subsidy. For local governments in impoverished areas, such as that in rural Sichuan, this requirement has significantly hampered the welfare service provision. This ‘mismatch’ is exacerbated by the lack of communication and understanding between the central and local governments:

The officials from higher levels visit us maybe once a year or so. But I don’t think they understand what we are facing here. Sometimes, they simply want to see the results and so we give them some numbers, but I don’t think they truly understand the situation. We need more resources and support. (Government official)

This government official continued to explain that they simply had no money to provide adequate care for children as mandated by the central government. Similarly, INGO representatives also identified the misalignment between authorities at the higher levels and local governments:

You know, each year, some of the provincial officials or those from higher levels will come and record the number of students at school, orphans included. They have to report to their superiors that 99% of students attend the school, you know, because of the compulsory 9 years education policy. But guess what happens when they leave after the initial name checking? Some of the kids just leave and never go back to school, but then on paper you would have 99% attendance rate. (INGO A)

Many state officials simply don’t know how to carry out these care arrangements. Sure, the central government has vision and gives you broad directions … but the problem is that local officials have no idea how to implement these goals. (INGO C)

These narratives illustrate the fragmentation between central and local governments, and the lack of policy enforcement mechanisms at local levels. Moreover, of significance to note here was the large discretion that local governments had in the policy implementation process, which arguably led to substantial variations in policy effectiveness and administration, as was evidenced by the inconsistency found in comparing registration lists of ‘orphans’ between two government departments. Decentralization of finance and administration resulting from economic reforms meant that local governments had increased discretion and responsibility to achieve both economic growth and welfare provision (Leung and Xu, 2015). But while one of the merits of welfare decentralization was to allow local governments to implement welfare mandates and appropriate welfare resources that meet local contextual needs, poor intergovernmental coordination and the dearth in capacity have created many uneven results and effects (Gao et al., 2011).

In response to these ‘mismatches’, INGOs were able to assist local governments in meeting specific welfare targets. For example, when the Education Bureau in County X of rural Sichuan could not adequately cover some of the expenses associated with rising education costs, INGO A helped relieve some of the Bureau’s responsibilities by subsidizing part of the tuition fees and daily food expenses for orphans and abandoned children attending local schools.

Administrative capacity

Relating to central–local mismatch, the lack of administrative capacity was also a recurrent theme throughout the data. Local governments in rural areas were found to have limited administrative capacities, which hindered their attempts in implementing welfare policies. For example, an official explained that they lacked manpower to carry out certain tasks, such as taking large census data. Consequently, officials consult local village heads and ask them to report the number of orphans currently residing in their village ‘to the best of his knowledge’. By doing so, however, the lack of verified identification once again leads to issues regarding welfare entitlement and registration, and welfare budgeting. Representatives from INGO B and INGO C also identified the lack of staffing and financial resources among local governments in their respective operating sites: ‘they just don’t have enough people doing what they’re asked to do’ (INGO C).

Administrative capacities of local governments obviously affect the policy implementation process, policy outcomes and effectiveness. Without a single, designated child welfare unit or department, the Ministry of Civil Affairs is essentially responsible for welfare needs of all local residents, including orphans and abandoned children. This puts considerable strain on manpower, finances, and other forms of resource allocation to local governments, the dearth of which impairs the provision of social welfare policies for orphans and abandoned children. Moreover, officials interviewed in this study complained about the high turnover rates among their staff and other child welfare-related posts such as teachers and caregivers: ‘Given the chance, who would choose to stay here and take care of these kids? They will leave the first instant they get a job in the city’ (Government official).

High turnover rates have adversely affected the local state’s capacities in carrying out continuous and consistent quality social welfare services for children. This problem is intensified in rural areas because adults in these communities tend to migrate to cities whenever possible, leaving behind the elderly, as was observed throughout the case study. Subsequently, the cohesion of rural communities disintegrates and further weakens the care and protection of orphans and abandoned children.

Deficiencies in administrative capacities and high turnover rates have also posed considerable challenges to the daily operations of INGOs. Indeed, INGOs here revealed that the quality and stability of their working relationships with local governments largely depend on personal ties. However, because officials tended to rotate in and out of their posts every two to three years, a change in the leadership of personnel can cause disruptions to existing operations. For example, one representative of INGO A claimed that there was a time where a change in the county-level official had seriously hampered their operation because this particular official simply did not agree on the vision and operations of the INGO. To the detriment of orphans and abandoned children who could have benefited from the intervention programme, INGO A ultimately had to leave the county altogether.

As a way to mitigate the state’s poor administrative capacities, all three INGOs hired local staff, not only to manage their own operations, but also to lend some staffing resources to local governments when necessary. For example, two local staff members hired by INGO A, responsible for verifying orphans’ identity each year, also share their report and findings with the local government, which partially helped resolve difficulties arising from staffing shortages. Another example is INGO C, which hired local staff to help deliver antiviral drugs to households affected by HIV/AIDS, a duty that the local Ministry of Civil Affairs was originally tasked with. INGO B runs a day care centre so that a number of residential children at the local CWI can spend the day outside of the institution. This alleviated the considerable caregiving burden for the staff working in the CWI, which was severely understaffed to begin with.

Professionalization and infrastructure

Unsurprisingly, infrastructure and professionalization was also a concern in rural areas, which in turn significantly affected the quality of care provided by orphans. For example, in a rural area in Xinjiang where INGO B operates, one representative observed that while several welfare institutions may appear impressive, a closer examination would reveal that they were not adequately built to meet disability needs:

If you look at the building and its grandeur, you can never guess that it really is just the structure. The inside of the building is so poorly designed … the sinks are too high for the kids to reach … mind you, many of them are bed-bound or wheelchair bound … and there are other things … it’s just not user friendly. What’s the use of stairs if so many kids can’t walk? (INGO B)

Another example illustrates how poor infrastructure, coupled with the lack administrative capacity, have together created poor conditions of residential care for orphans and abandoned children in County X:

Yes, there are some local welfare institutions here … but I’m sure the conditions are horrible. They put the elderly, the disabled, and orphans and abandoned children alltogether. There are not enough people caring for them and none of them are professionally trained. You can just imagine the situation … we have never been in there before. (INGO A)

On the policy level, even though the Regulations on Child Welfare Institutions (Ministry of Civil Affairs, 2013) specified that the construction of CWIs must be scientific-, and needs-based, the operationalization of these regulations is yet to be realized. Furthermore, while the regulations stipulated that local governments bear the primary responsibility in financing and building these institutions, ‘with the central government providing subsidies if necessary’, the reality is that without proper knowledge of disability needs, the construction of a ‘disability-friendly, homelike’ environment for orphans and abandoned children is very difficult to achieve at local levels.

While acknowledging the limitations resulting from poor infrastructure and professionalization, INGOs were able import resources and professional knowledge that were beneficial to orphans and abandoned children. INGOs are especially advantageous in terms of accessing knowledge and professional skills that are beyond their immediate service sites. Their transnational and expansive networks enable INGOs to access top child welfare experts and new knowledge arising from recent research, all of which can be transferrable and shared with local governments. For example, INGO B conducts regular capacity-building workshops, bringing in child welfare experts, social workers, and special needs therapists for local state-run CWIs. Similarly, INGO A prints and disseminates handbooks for teachers and caregivers working at state-run local schools that included basic principles of child development and the particular developmental needs associated with each of these stages. INGO C, on the other hand, draws from evidence-based best practice models from overseas to create a system of community-based care for orphans and abandoned children affected by HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, while local governments were very much preoccupied with meeting the financial and educational needs of orphans and abandoned children, INGOs displayed the capacity to implement programmes that cater towards children’s psychosocial and emotional needs, in addition to their basic needs. All three INGOs were able to take their programmes one step further and provide empowerment-based or psychosocial support for child beneficiaries, something that one state official admitted had never entered his mind: ‘before INGO A, I never thought about the kids’ psychological needs, I mean … we’re so busy with putting shelters over their head, who has time to think about other stuff’. These examples illustrate how INGOs were able to, through various channels and strategies, to help enhance local governments’ capacity to provide better quality care and service for orphans and abandoned children, and to raise the standards of care for these children (Table 2).

Table 2.

Coding template for state challenges and INGO corresponding strategies.

State: welfare provision challenges	INGO: corresponding strategies
1. Welfare entitlement and birth registration
Absence of hukou Unverified parental death records Poor record keeping Poor identification verification mechanism	Provides service for those ‘unverified’ children Import data collection methods Sends hired staff and volunteers to help verify children identities
2. Central–local mismatch
Limited fiscal resource to fulfil welfare functions Central vs local realities (underreporting and/or overinflating numbers) Local state official discretion (widely varying interpretation of welfare policies) Weak public accountability system Weak policy enforcement mechanism	Offers fiscal support/shared responsibilities Emphasis on evidence-based intervention Designs programmes that help relief some of the welfare burdens of local government, for example, run day care centre in collaboration with state-run CWI
3. Administrative capacity
Severely understaffed Fiscal constraints No centralized child welfare unit for intergovernmental coordination	Offers hired staff to assist government to meet welfare duties Works with specific department units to minimize bureaucracy
4. Professionalization and infrastructure
Lack of professional knowledge Inadequate infrastructure (e.g. disability-friendly child welfare institutions)	Imports professional knowledge and skills Consultation work Capacity-building for local CWIs Provides evidence-based ‘best practice models’ Input on national policies

INGO: international non-governmental organization; CWI: child welfare institute.

Discussion

This article has examined existing shortcomings and challenges encountered by local governments in implementing welfare policies and services for orphans and abandoned children in rural China, and how INGOs sought to mitigate some of these challenges. Evidence gathered from this study suggests that while local contexts may differ across the three cases, common themes emerged from the core experiences described by INGO staff and state officials. Particularly, the salient themes welfare entitlement and birth registration, central–local mismatch, administrative capacity, and professionalization and infrastructure were identified as particular hindrances to the policy implementation process.

This study has also demonstrated that where local governments struggled with social welfare and service provision, INGOs played a significant role in filling these welfare gaps by importing and transferring professional knowledge, expertise, skills, financial and human resources, and evidence-based best practice models into localities. INGO representatives were able to articulate and identify very clearly the welfare needs of their intended beneficiaries (orphans and abandoned children), and how their respective organization can deliver programmes and services that meet those particular needs, thereby partially relieving the government’s welfare burden. Not only does the presence of INGOs generate positive impacts for child beneficiaries, it also helps local governments by boosting their performance in light of inter-local government competition, which is typically the case in China (Zhou, 2004). This may have explained why local governments were rather open towards collaborating with INGOs. Furthermore, INGOs were also able to implement programmes and interventions that catered more towards children’s psychosocial needs, something that, given China’s relative infancy in child welfare development, was understandably absent in rural China.

Taken together, local socioeconomic circumstances and government dynamics have posed immense challenges to the process and outcomes of welfare service provision for orphans and abandoned children in rural China. Arguably, poor state welfare provision resulting from these challenges has engendered the growth of INGOs. At the same time, the collaborative relationship observed between INGOs and local governments reflects the state’s diversification of welfare production strategies, and accentuates the departure from a purely government-driven, unidirectional approach towards social management (Jing, 2008; Jing and Savas, 2009; Wu and Chan, 2012). Local governments that work in collaboration with INGOs, like those in this study, were in effect outsourcing some of their welfare functions to INGOs. These developments aligned with the Chinese government’s objective to develop a more pluralistic social security and welfare system (Leung, 2006).

While INGOs play an important role in filling in some of the service gaps, they should not be perceived as the ‘magic bullet’ in response to inadequate social support and service for orphans and abandoned children (or other at-risk children groups) in rural China. Despite the positive contributions made by INGOs, they are not without their limitations. Firstly, INGOs in China still operate in an ambiguous legal environment. As Keyser (2009: 51) noted, the existing gap in the law ‘fails to provide a legal mechanism for non-state entities to contract to care for children, yet is vague regarding what the state is committed to providing’. Even though collaborative service delivery is gaining currency in the Chinese context (Jing and Savas, 2009), the lack of legal status and regulatory explicitness may create substantial confusion and organizational risks for INGOs.

Second, the politicization of child welfare issues can create adverse effects for INGOs’ operations. Indeed, issues pertaining to child welfare often implicate matters that are beyond the child itself, and a state’s failure to protect and ensure the safety of children can incur political and social repercussions in addition to economic costs. To a large extent, INGOs are still viewed with suspicion by the Chinese government, and while many INGOs we have come across asserted that they have a good working relationship with local governments, they were not immune to abrupt changes brought about by political manoeuvres. For instance, INGO B was asked to move offices several times, while several staff members from INGO C have had experiences of being held in custody for disclosing HIV/AIDS-related information to the public. Unsurprisingly there were also reported instances where state officials simply refused to acknowledge the existence of HIV/AIDS in their localities, while others had chosen to underreport or overinflate certain ‘numbers’ to achieve welfare directives, or to minimize political repercussions. As one can see, the politicization of child welfare issues not only disrupts the daily operations of INGOs’ operations, it also erodes the quality and consistency of service delivered to orphans and abandoned children.

Third, because INGOs rely almost exclusively on overseas donations and fundraising, the sustainability of existing programmes and interventions in the long-run is questionable. Given the growing demands of care and services for vulnerable children groups, INGOs are incapable of sustaining or scaling-up services indefinitely. Ultimately, the positive involvement of the Chinese government is instrumental in delivering social welfare services and in sustaining lasting improvements for orphans and abandoned children (Ferguson and Heidemann, 2009).

Finally, even though we believe that most child welfare INGOs are genuinely working for the betterment of child welfare and service provision for orphans and abandoned children and other at-risk children groups in China, we cannot discount the possibility of malpractice, especially considering the lack of public accountability systems (Hasmath and Hsu, 2008). Unfortunately, there have been reported incidents where, for example, private orphanages run by non-state actors have colluded with local governments to misappropriate funds, all the while claiming to provide care (Lau, 2013). Despite concerted efforts from both civil society actors and the Chinese government, many challenges remain in China’s child welfare sector.

To this end, this article has argued that the central government must play a more proactive role in strengthening local governments’ capacities in safeguarding the care, protection, and welfare provision of orphans and abandoned children in rural areas, and in strengthening public accountability and policy enforcement mechanisms to deter potential abuse. INGOs will most likely continue to play a critical role in social service provision for orphans and abandoned children, but perhaps more importantly, in knowledge and skills transfer to local governments, and child welfare-related workers, and in building local capacity with domestic NGOs.

Limitations

Our findings should be interpreted with caution, given several study limitations. First, the identified challenges in welfare policy implementations at local government level are not applicable to all local governments across China. It is conceivable that the experiences of local governments, especially those with more fiscal resources, may be different from those that participated in this study. However, our findings do corroborate with existing studies that examined the policy implementation process and outcomes at local or street levels. Second, the experiences observed among the INGOs in this study cannot be generalized to all INGOs, nor can we generalize our findings to reflect the larger civil society landscape. Due to the heterogeneity of all non-state organizations in China, it is difficult to deduce to what extent the experiences of other child welfare INGOs resonated with the ones in this study. Nevertheless, we selected three INGOs to allow for common themes to emerge.

Conclusion

The present article has examined the role of INGOs in social service provision for orphans and abandoned children in rural China in light of existing welfare gaps. It was found that INGOs play a critical role in social service provision, and in importing fiscal and human resources, and professional knowledge and skills to advance the standards of child welfare and service provision for orphans and abandoned children in rural China. By developing programmes and interventions that target specific, localized problems associated with these children, INGOs were able to help resolve some of the local government’s difficulties in implementing mandated child welfare policies. However, this study has found that there is an urgent need for the Chinese government to enhance social welfare provision for orphans and abandoned children in rural areas, and to implement policy enforcement and public accountability mechanisms in order to ensure quality and consistent service delivery for vulnerable child groups in China in the long-run.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author biographies

Cheryl Chui is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Social Work & Social Administration, The University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include third sector research, state-society relations, and child welfare.

Lucy Jordan is assistant professor at the Department of Social Work & Social Administration, The University of Hong Kong. She is also Senior Research Associate at the Center for Social Development of Africa, Faculty of Humanities, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Her research interests include migration and family, and third sector research.

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