Intervention necessary to help street children, academic says

• Source: Global Times
• [23:43 July 02 2009]
• Comments

By Wen Ya

Street children should be given “compulsory help,” an academic told the Global Times yesterday.

“Kids that live on the street are unable to think clearly for themselves and can’t plan their lives, so someone has to intervene to help them,” Chen Tianben, associate professor at the Public Order & Security Department at Chinese People’s Public Security University, said.

“If the authorities don’t come to their aid, no one will and they will never grow up healthily.”

It is not enough simply to feed them, he said.

Authorities should contact the children’s relatives or find places for them to stay at safe houses, he said.

An official surnamed Wang from the Zhengzhou Street Children Protection Center in Henan Province said, however, that street children should be offered help, but not forced to take it.

“It’s difficult for us to tell if the people begging with the children are their real relatives,” he said.

Also, some children get very angry if they feel they are being forced into accepting help, because they feel it is another way in which they are being controlled, Wang said.

“Even if we offer them food, clothes, an education, entertainment and psychological consulting, some of them just don’t want them,” he said.

“They waste the food, destroy our equipment, beat other children and then run away.”

There are more than 130 protection centers for street children across the country, the People’s Daily said on its website.

Despite their lack of funds, staff and equipment, they welcome about 150,000 street kids every year, the report said.