China announces plan for supporting children with disabilities
CGTN
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China's State Council Information Office holds a press conference on building up of the Rehabilitation Aiding System for Children with Disabilities, June 1, 2018. (Photo: CGTN)

June 1 is International Children's Day. Recently, the State Council of China officially approved the building up of a Rehabilitation Aiding System for Children with Disabilities, in a bid to help more disabled children.

Currently, there are around 1.67 million disabled children age six or younger in China. But most rehabilitation projects are not included in existing health insurance packages – posing a challenge to disabled children from welfare centers and less-advantaged families when it comes to medical coverage and bills. Luckily for them – there's new hope.

The vice chairman of China Disabled Persons’ Federation, Jia Yong said that for eligible children with vision, extremity or intelligence disabilities and autism, who are between six years old or younger and from welfare centers and less-advantaged families, they will provide operations, equipment and rehabilitation training, to improve their situation, and enable them to live an independent life and have social participation as well.

Jia also noted there’re about 7,000 designated rehabilitation institutions nationwide, and that over 600 thousand disabled children have successfully gained rehabilitation aiding. But they’re still faced with many problems and challenges.

For example, the development of rehabilitation services is unbalanced because of the weak rehabilitation foundation, not to mention situations like some rural areas lacking relevant rehabilitation agencies, local private institutions being of variable quality, and families seeking rehabilitation services in big cities sometimes having to wait for a very long time.

To solve those problems, the central government will provide subsidies for local governments, which will improve the service capabilities of rehabilitation centers for disabled children.

At the same time, the government will strengthen the standardization of designated rehabilitation institutions, enhance the quantity and quality of private ones, carry out more training sessions for professionals, and comprehensively supervise the safety, quality and subsidy implementation of rehabilitation institutions.

The rehabilitation system changes will take effect on October 1 this year. As a starting point, it will widen the channels of institutionalized and socialized support for disabled children in China.