Care for Children have been working in China for seventeen years to develop family placement (foster care) as a positive alternative to institutional care for abandoned and disabled children. Robert Glover OBE went to China in 1998 as a consultant to the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau, funded by DfID to establish a family placement system. After seventeen years of demonstrating the transformation that family placement has on children?s lives it is very rewarding to see the new legislation come into place. Care for Children team in Beijing have been instrumental in the drafting of both the previous temporary regulations and the new legislation. Care for Children team also worked with UNICEF to produce the Moving Forward document into Mandarin.
On September 24, 2014, China's Ministry of Civil Affairs promulgated new measures on foster care, which took effect on December 1, 2014. They replace temporary measures that have been applied since 2004.
According to Xu Jianzhong, Deputy Director of the Ministry's Social Welfare and Donations Department, the new measures "will further guarantee the rights of abandoned children and help them to integrate into families and society." Moreover, he stated, "compared with the current regulation, the new one sets stricter qualification standards for foster parents."
