A Study On Street Children’s Need And Their Institutional Relief Service

Since the reform and opening up, China has stepped into a period with rapid social and economic transformation. A large number of street children also appeared, which has become a hot topic with wide concern. In2012, China met its first year of an era of children’s welfare. Both government and the academic circles began to pay attention to and conduct research on street children from the perspective of social welfare. The author of this thesis conducted a study on street children service agencies and street children, discussing needs and problems of street children as well as function, features, problems and development approaches of street children service agencies. It is attempted to explore the innovation and transformation for street children service agencies in terms of approaches, direction and countermeasures.The thesis adopted social exclusion theory, need theory, welfare pluralism theory and children welfare perspective, as well as methods of literature survey, case study, interview and observation. Based on an analysis of the international literature on street children and concerned relief, the author pointed out the needs of street children included basic survival guarantee, receiving education, acquiring social support, regression and development, while the functions of street children service agencies included providing precaution and regression service, social welfare service, and social management service and so on. In the meantime, the author held that the major problems facing contemporary street children service agencies included incomplete policies and regulations in street children relief, understrength of relief personnel, unscientific relief methods and low utilization of relief infrastructures and so on. Through the analysis and discussion on the institutional relief service at Nanjing, the author put forward that the approach for improving the street children institutional relief service should be construct need oriented systems of street children welfare policy and relief service.This thesis has innovation aspects revealed in the following:firstly, the thesis adopted a perspective of street children’s need, which was a breakthrough of the previously seen research perspective of social management of a country. Secondly, the author put forward three phase of academic researches on street children through the literature studies, in that periods from1949to1982,1982to2003,2003till now, respectively indicated the beginning, start-up, and fast development of street children studies. Meanwhile, the author pointed out that the street children studies had transformed from the perspective of social control to children welfare. Thirdly, the author analyzed China’s social welfare transformation and put forward that the major development direction for street children relief would be constructing need oriented street children social welfare system.