Children do homework in a classroom at Light Love Family, a nonprofit boarding school for homeless children, in Beijing's Shunyi district, last month. Photos by Wang Jing / China Daily

A child eats lunch at Light Love Family.

A boy plays guitar in a dormitory room at the boarding school.

Two boys play during a break at the boarding school.

Editor's note: After the deaths of several vagrant children and orphans in recent months, including seven in a fire at a private care home, experts in the public and private sectors have called on authorities to speed up their efforts to resolve issues concerning the guardianship of abandoned and orphaned children.

Chang Guizi needs heart surgery, but a local hospital refuses to operate on him because he has no legal guardian to sign the consent form.

The 13-year-old, a third-grader at a primary school in Kunming, Yunnan province, has had to forgo all physical exercise since he was diagnosed with congenital heart disease in November.

One day after school, he returned home to his foster family and complained of difficulty in breathing.

"We took him to a hospital, and an X-ray showed he has a hole in his heart," said Pi Zhonghui, aretired driver who takes care of Chang and five other homeless children. "The doctor told me it's a kind of congenital heart defect and the boy needs surgery."

Andrew Lok, director of the Yunnan Jiaxin Children Assistance Center, an NGO that helps street children and is providing Chang's living expenses, said: "The hospital told us the surgery would cost about 20,000 yuan ($3,200). A charitable foundation has agreed to cover the expense."

At first, doctors at the First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University agreed to operate, but the hospital's legal advisers later said the surgery should be halted because of the status of the child.

Neither Pi nor the center is eligible to sign consent forms for the boy's operation. "The hospital's lawyer said we have to find his birth parents," Lok said.

Chang barely remembers any useful information about his parents.

A passer-by found the boy wandering near a train station three years ago and took him to the center, Lok said. Chang told the center's staff he had lived with his mother after his parents had divorced but she abandoned him, Lok said, adding the boy has forgotten his parents' names.

He only remembers his home was in a street called Xijie and it was in Zhaotong, a city in Yunnan. But police in Kunming and Zhaotong have been unable to find his family.

"We've turned to the provincial civil affairs bureau for help, to see if the government can act as Chang's legal guardian, but officials are still mulling over the case because there is no precedent," Lok said.

"The boy is fine now, but we don't want a time to come when he can have the surgery only because he's in a critical situation."

Registered as a nonprofit organization in 2004, the Yunnan Jiaxin Children Assistance Center has helped about 1,300 children like Chang who lived or worked on the streets.

Vagrant children can have meals, take showers, do laundry and receive informal instruction, in painting and music for instance, when they visit its day-care center. The nonprofit also provides temporary shelter in the suburb of Kunming for homeless children.

For those who are of school age and are willing to receive a formal education, the organization can arrange for them to live with a foster family, who receive financial aid in return.

For complicated reasons, these children do not have hukou, or residency permits, so they cannot go to public schools. Even if some manage to finish high school, any hope they have of going to college is usually dashed because they are not eligible to take the national college entrance exam, Lok said.

1 million youngsters

There are no official statistics on the exact number of street children in China, but experts estimate the figure at more than 1 million.

Private institutions dedicated to helping these youngsters are weighed down by challenges - not only issues over guardianship, but also site selection and a high staff turnover rate.

Wang Xianlong, who is in charge of administrative affairs for Light Love Family, a Beijing boarding school for street children, said his school has been forced from place to place on the outskirts of the capital.

The school, with 105 students and 16 staff members, moved to Shunyi district in 2011.

"Our school has moved about nine times in the past decade," he said. "We can't give these children a home if we can't find a suitable place to settle."

Soaring rent and demolition brought on by the capital's economic development are two contributors to the situation, he said. "Sometimes, we had to move because neighbors complained that our children are too noisy or dirty."

Lok said his organization has moved five times for similar reasons.

Such private institutions, which rely heavily on public donations and support from charitable foundations, often struggle to keep workers, largely because NGOs can only afford to pay low salaries.

Yan Ling, a math teacher for Light Love Family, said he has seen more than 70 teachers come and go.

He earned 500 yuan a month when he started at the school in 2007, and even now his pay is less than 2,000 yuan. The average monthly salary for Beijing residents was about 4,600 yuan in 2011.

"I've never asked our principal to pay more as I know our school's financial situation," he said.

Yan, who has a bachelor's degree from a university, said what makes him stay is his students.

"Just as you give a glass of water to a thirsty man, when you give love to these kids, they feel grateful, and they always give more back," he said, adding that he works with his students from 6 am to 6 pm every day.

"I remember when I had just come here and slept in the teachers' dormitory. Some students would stand there waiting for me to wake up so they could play basketball with me," he said.

On birthdays, he said, his bed is often full of gifts from students, such as handmade cards or gadgets they found on the street.

However, Yan said he may have to find another job with higher pay soon, as his 3-year-old son is old enough to go to kindergarten.

"I want to afford a good education for him," he added.

A dysfunctional system

Zhang Wenjuan, deputy director of the Beijing Children's Legal Aid and Research Center, said the issues of abandoned and street children can all be attributed to China's dysfunctional guardian system, or unspecified State responsibilities to protect a child's rights.

"Chinese law stipulates parents are the legal guardians of minors, but our government has not done enough to enable parents to fulfill their responsibilities or intervene when parents fail in their obligations," she said.

In less-developed areas, the assistance system for parents is weaker, leading some to abandon children who have disabilities or major illnesses because they are unable to afford the medical expenses, she said.

"Some parents are not born good parents, but the State does not effectively intervene when parents abuse their children, which can result in children running away from home."

Criminal law requires victims to submit a case to the court in the case of domestic abuse, and the only exception is when a victim is killed or severely injured, Zhang said.

"The law neglects the fact that children usually are too young to sue or collect evidence for themselves," she said.

In her eyes, what the civil law suggests for appointing a legal guardian for a child after the parents' deaths has flaws, too.

Civil law stipulates grandparents, siblings and other close relatives receive preferential treatment when a court orders guardianship for an orphaned child.

It added if a minor does not have those relatives, the child's parents' employer, community committee or village committee can be appointed the legal guardian, while civil affairs departments are last on the list.

"How can you expect an employer to be willing to be a guardian?" Zhang said.

She said the system leads to many children living without guardians, and their awkward status sets up numerous obstacles to their ability to access public services and other government benefits.

Days after a blaze that claimed seven lives and severely injured another person at a private orphanage in Lankao county, Henan province, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said for the first time that authorities should act as legal guardians for orphans and abandoned children in private institutions.

Individuals and private organizations that raise orphans and abandoned children should run their organizations jointly with civil affairs authorities, and the latter should act as children's legal guardians, the ministry spokesman Wang Laizhu was quoted by People's Daily as saying on Thursday.

Wang pledged that the ministry will draw lessons from the disaster and speed up the process of improving laws to help disadvantaged children.

Tong Xiaojun, a specialist in child rights at the China Youth University for Political Sciences who has participated in legislation, said draft regulations on child welfare include establishing child welfare agencies at all levels of government.

The draft also suggested setting up community-based child service centers that can deliver subsidies and assistance to help families cope when dealing with poverty, domestic violence, disease and other troubles.

Guo Anfei in Kunming contributed to this story.

hedan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 01/15/2013 page7)