VA
Insights

Special children have always been one of the key focus areas of public welfare sector. To provide help for these children has also been the target of many institutions. Currently, many NGOs and social enterprises in China have made many creative attempts in this area, achieving significant social impact.

Target and Forms of Assistance

Special Children refers to children with defects in body, intellect, personality and emotion or mental health. The common forms of the special children are children with handicap, mental retardation, cerebral palsy, autism, Aas Berg’s disease and so on. To help special children, we must center on the children. Many institutions are doing targeted rehabilitation training according to the features of the special children, such as:

• Shanghai QiXiang Child Development Center who provides individual training and tutoring for children with learning disability, autism, Aas Berg’s disease and other needs for improving learning ability;
• Baoji QingQingCao Rehabilitation and Education Center for Handicapped Children who offers special fulltime and residential classes for children with cerebral palsy, mental handicap and autism, as well as professional evaluation and training for borderline handicapped children in regular kindergartens and primary schools;
• Beijing Golden Wings Art Rehabilitation Service Center for Disabled Children who provides special children, e.g. children with autism, with art training courses.

The forms of assistance also vary. In addition to traditional activities in rehabilitation centers and training sites, more flexible and individualized services such as in-home assistance are offered by some institutions. For instance, We Love Supporting Project initiated by Jinan Mingtian Children Rehabilitation Centre, will select 10 families of intention of participation and required conditions, for whom the center will perform evaluation of the child, enact individualized family assistance plan including techniques and skills to help with children’s rehabilitation, psychological counseling for parents, and family structuring design.

Meanwhile, more and more institutions are focusing on families with special children, providing them with various support and services.

• Professional training and support: many institutions are offering parents professional rehabilitation knowledge and training so as to help with special children’s rehabilitation more effectively. For example, the “i-dB Project”, the assistance program for hearing impaired children, affiliated with Chunnuan Fund, has held 5 sessions of off-line training courses for a total of 153 parents, effectively contributing to shortening children’s length of stay at rehabilitation centers.
• Respite care service: since special children need 24×7 care, parents then are under great physical and mental pressure in a long run. Therefore, some institutions are dedicated to providing these parents with respite care service by replacing the parents to take care of the children with professionals for a few hours so that parents can get precious time for rest and adjustment, e.g. the Respite Station Plan initiated by Guangzhou Yang Ai Special Children Parent Club, Respite Station at Yingkou Jinshi Autistic Children Rehabilitation Center.
• Sponsorship: some institutions also provide various forms of assistance to ease the financial strains of these families, e.g. the “i-dB Project” sponsors some hearing impaired children’s cochlear implant surgery.
• Establishing parents’ communities: group activities and support groups among parents can enable parents to communicate with each other, share experiences of helping with children’s rehabilitation and form appropriate social groups to support each other. In addition, for more widened family groups, virtual communities, such as online communities, QQ groups, are also bases for parents’ communication, from which more families get benefits.
• Service focused on needy families: some institutions devoted more resources and energy to families with more difficulties and needs. For instance, Shenzhen Angel-land Disabled Children Caring Center focuses on helping migrant workers’ families with children with cerebral palsy, providing them with support of rehabilitation skills, emotion and community efforts.

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In addition to the efforts of themselves and their families, in the long term, the rehabilitation and growth of special children also counts on the inclusiveness and support of the community and the whole society. Many institutions have already realized this and they have organized many activities to make better community environment for the special children. For example, Baoji QingQingCao Rehabilitation and Education Center for Handicapped Children held a series of community educational activities toward village doctors, women in reproductive age and the public on knowledge about early interventions of cerebral palsy, early discovery of mentally-handicapped and autistic children, professional therapy intervention and so on, which has greatly enhanced public awareness and acceptance.

Rise of the Social Enterprise Models

Traditional institutions for special children are often non-profit organizations. The source of their capital relies on donations and governmental support. In recent years, with the rise of the model of social enterprise, some social enterprises have also emerged in the field of special children caring. The most common model of social enterprise is to make use of the specific business model in a specified field to gain commercial returns, which can be used to support the operation of the institution and specific assistance projects. In the field of special children caring, there are mainly three models of social enterprises as follows:

• To Charge Service Fee: the rehabilitation training courses for special children, the rehabilitation skills training for the parents, and the respite caring service for the families, are very valuable services for children and family. If the quality of the services is good enough to be recognized by the parents, many families will be willing to pay. For example, the “i-dB” project’s training for the parents of the hearing impaired children has been free of charge during the first five sessions. But according to the results of follow-up survey of the participating parents, parents all quite appreciated the value of the training and expressed their willingness to pay. Take Jinan Mingtian Children Rehabilitation Centre as another example. In addition to providing 10 families with free in-home service, it also provides 4 families with paid service. In fact, charging a reasonable amount of money for the service is beneficial for these institutions to grow steadily and also enables the organization to provide better service for more families.
• To Sell Children’s Works: some special children have a gift in some specific artistic fields such as painting and music. The rehabilitation training developed by some institutions are also based on art training. In this way, works of some artistic values can be created by the special children talented in these areas if they receive appropriate training. Gaining commercial returns by selling these works and their relating derivatives is also a common business model. For example, Beijing Golden Wings Art Rehabilitation Service Center for Disabled Children gives children with autism painting courses so that some children become able to create drawings of some artistic value. Some of their works even got collected by some professional institutions. For instance, the original work of the trainee KANG Rui, Opera at Grandma’s Home, has been collected by National Centre for the Performing Arts. With the business operation of its matching social enterprise Love Golden Wings, the excellent works are turned into high-quality copies, and other forms of derivatives such as calendars, cups, cushions, iPad cases and so on, for sale in mobile art museums, taobao online shops or other places. One part of the returns are used to support the operation of social enterprise, the other part will be sent to the children’s families which can give them some financial support as well as a great sense of achievement, which is great reward for both the families and the children.
• Others: apart from the above two forms, many institutions are also exploring other possible models of social enterprise. But currently, these trials have not proved mature yet. For instance, Shenzhen Angel-land Disabled Children Caring Center hopes to train the parents to make and sell some simple handicrafts to get some income, which is still in the primary developmental stage and has not gained ideal effects.

Future Trends and Challenges

Though many good results are harvested, a lot of helping institutions for special children are faced with many challenges including the following aspects:

• From the perspective of the families with special children, many of these families are not in good economic status, which to a great extent constrains the operation of work by the helping institutions. For instance, it is difficult for the institutions to maintain systematic and long-term training to needy families living in suburbs and mountain areas, which has negative influence on the training effects.

• From the perspective of human resources, due to the mismatch between working intensity and remunerations, rehabilitation therapists’ turnover rate is high, which impedes both the development of the institutions and recovery of the children. Some volunteer-based institutions are also faced with the problems with high turnover, managerial problems, and uneven work level and engagement, which leads to differences in children’s experiences.

• From the perspective of the long-term development of the institutions, since special children cannot go out alone, their families probably have to choose institutions around, which results in limited service zone of each caring center. Therefore, with low charge of service or even free of charge, these small-scale institutions are facing great challenges regarding its development. Though many of them have started to explore their own model of social enterprise, a lot of problems (e.g. copyright problems with selling children’s works) still need solving at this early stage, much professional abilities (e.g. expanding sales channels) need improving. In short, there are still only a few institutions that have formed significant scale and entered positive economic development track.

To improve the helping model and self-sustainable model at the same time, in a long run, there are following development directions for domestic institutions helping special children:

• Establishing regional industry platform: since most of the institutions are small-scale and scattered, some of them are considering establishing larger-scale industry platform. Take One Foundation’s Ocean Heaven Plan as an example. It aims to establish a national network model for social service organizations to better offer assistance to special children, enhance the professional service ability of social organizations, unite corporates, research institutes and social organizations to reinforce publicity and social advocacy, and promote governmental care and policy support for special children. This platform can help to maximize the utilization rate of resources and scale effect so as to solve many problems resulting from the weakness of small-scale institutions.
• Exploring later development path of special children: considering their future life and long-term development, it is crucial to think about their career development. Currently, there have already been some institutions offering vocational skills training to older children and establishing small factories, such as the Dream Factory Day Activity Center for Adults with Intellectual Disabilities held by Guangzhou Yang Ai Special Children Parent Club. This kind of service is still under discussion and exploration. It now mainly includes simple handicraft and cleaning training. There are two major challenges for providing career service for children with milder symptoms. One difficulty lies in finding suitable special children and appropriate work whose process can be dissected into standard and clear procedures. The other lies in finding suitable corporate, which counts on both a company’s willingness to accept these special workers and governmental policy support and encouragement.
• Last but not least, helping special children cannot be reached at one leap. Helping institutions must consider how these children can get long-term caring. To dig further and deeper, they must consider how to ensure their own continuous operation, and more importantly, how to advocate for public concern and support for these children.