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Few empirical studies have examined the impact of the universal social services provided to ordinary youth on their resilience and psychosocial adjustment, especially youth from developing countries like China. Based on a sample of 857 high school students between the ages of 13–19 from Beijing, this article examines the pattern of social services provided to Chinese youth and the impact of these services on their resilience and positive or negative psychosocial adjustment (depression, delinquency, prosocial behavior). The results reveal that: (a) Chinese youth generally make very limited use of services but they report moderate satisfaction; (b) both frequency and satisfaction of service use significantly predicts resilience, and resilience significantly predicts lower depression and higher prosocial behavior; (c) resilience fully mediates the relationships between social service frequency/satisfaction and depression/prosocial behavior. The findings give support to the public health model of social services and reveal that building resilience is one mechanism that universal service contributes to youths' psychosocial adjustment. Future research may further investigate the relationships between social services, resilience and psychosocial adjustment in other geographical areas and time periods of China, and comparative studies between China and other countries may also be useful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid urbanisation necessitates more research attention to the challenges and resources among families moving from rural to urban areas. Using a multisystemic resilience framework, this qualitative study explores how resilience is embodied in the intrapersonal, interpersonal and institutional levels of the daily lives of migrant children in China, an exemplar of contemporary fast-urbanising societies. I conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with ten migrant children who live in Beijing, along with their parents, teachers and social service providers. The findings suggest that rural-to-urban migration is both an empowering and a depriving experience. On the intrapersonal level, migration increases children's independence, personal growth, future aspirations, as well as academic stress. On the interpersonal level, migrant children receive substantial support from parents, siblings, extended family and peers; however, they are at risk of insufficient parental supervision and loss of meaningful relationships. On the institutional level, migration provides children with a better environment, better school experiences, greater material resources and social organisation services, but migrant children remain vulnerable to educational discrimination, economic deprivation and poor neighbourhood environments in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social workers were introduced to funeral homes in China amid the transition and expansion of both the funeral home industry and the social work profession and are proving to play a valuable, though under-researched role in serving not just clients but also communities and funeral home staff. Funeral home social work fills gaps in after-death care and mental health and is distinct from palliative, hospice, end-of-life, and bereavement social work. Based on the experiences of funeral homes that employ social workers, this article argues that this innovation may bring new ideas to bridge some of the service gaps in after-death care in China and globally. This article outlines the support that will be needed from funeral homes, social work service agencies, and educational and research institutes to facilitate further development of funeral home mental health and social services and to promote the professionalization of funeral home social workers in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, social service contracting is a new phenomenon even in the most developed cities and areas. The action that the government contracts with non-government organizations in delivering community service is merely a local initiative under the context of social administration reform. There are scarce theoretical and empirical discussions relevant to social service contracting in Chinese academic community. In the light of this gap, this article draws on literature of social service contracting in developed countries or cities to understand key elements ensuring an effective contracting and impacts of contracting. Available literature on social service contracting in China is used for discussion to understand the development of social service contracting in China. Public and social services contracting in China can be briefly divided into three models: non-competitive contracting model, competitive contracting model and informal contracting model. Factors influencing the implementation of contracting programs in China are concerned with the participation of sufficient NGOs, the roles and attitudes of government agencies and the relationship and the interaction between stakeholders. The contracting programs both have positive and negative impacts on service provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) in social welfare provision in addressing the developmental and material needs of orphans in rural China. Data from qualitative interviews with INGO representatives and state officials were combined with documentary analysis to investigate the ways in which the state and civil society respond to orphans' needs. It was found that while INGOs are actively contributing to the social provision of orphans, in part reflecting the pluralization of welfare, there is an urgent need for the Chinese government to play a more proactive role in safeguarding the care and protection of one of China's most vulnerable population groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are China’s Protestants doing outside the walls of their homes and churches? This article is the result of collaboration between the three named authors, all of whom conducted fieldwork for it. It examines the range of community service and charity work (including poverty alleviation, disaster relief, education, nursing homes, medical care, and various forms of evangelism) that Chinese Protestants have in the past and still do undertake within the contemporary Chinese Communist Party-state (CCP). Drawing on extensive fieldwork over several years in multiple sites across the PRC, the researchers ask: (i) in what ways do CCP policies on religion help or hinder Protestant social service? and (ii) to what extent are Protestant efforts in harmony with or beyond the control of CCP religious policies? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Provision of social service is one of the most significant roles of the police. A review of the related literature in policing seems to reveal that empowerment holds significance for frontline officers who are largely responsible for social service delivery. This study examines the possible relationships between police social service role strain (PSSRS) and police social service psychological empowerment (PSSPE) among frontline police officers in China. This study adopts a two-phase (quantitative and qualitative approaches) sequential explanatory design. In the first phase, a questionnaire is used to collect data from a sample of 200 frontline community patrol officers in Shenzhen Public Security Bureau, China. After conducting the quantitative analysis, the author uses in-depth interviews to explore the nature of PSSRS and PSSPE from 12 selected interviewees' insights. According to the results of the survey and in-depth interviews, the participants report a comparatively high level of PSSRS and a low level of PSSPE. It has been found that there are significantly negative correlations between PSSRS and PSSPE in the Chinese police organization. The Chinese police force is suggested to provide effective interventions for individual experience of psychological empowerment by continuously committing to the organizational philosophy of community policing in response to the PSSRS among frontline police officers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The use of public-nonprofit partnerships (PNPs) and intergovernmental schemes of social service provision has been growing in China, making intergovernmental management of PNPs a matter of salient importance. This article proposes an intergovernmental analytical framework that links the adoption of competitive contracting to PNP management. It argues that intergovernmental preference incoherence and stewardship relations lead to collusion between collaborating governments and nonprofits, and that higher-level governments, in response, may intervene by adopting competitive contracting to change the steward nonprofits back to agents. The article examines social service contracting in Shanghai. Facing a lack of nonprofit participation, the municipal government imposed competitive contracting, but the reform was trapped in an intergovernmental implementation game involving the municipal government, district governments, and nonprofits. Although the municipal government combined coercion and incentives to forge a quick policy breakthrough, its central management system was hampered by institutional and resource constraints. The city's district governments tacitly resisted the reform program, and the nonprofits were weak and passive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While China's economic progress and social transformation demand an urgent refurbishment of its social welfare system, after a decade of development community centers have gradually become the major infrastructure of service delivery in urban China. In this article, the authors examine the social and historical context of the development of community services in urban China, and then focus on the community center as an emerging force in a society undergoing considerable change. A study of community centers in Jinan, a large city in eastern China, is reported, which reveals major difficulties that hinder the development of these centers as the principal hubs of community life. The authors outline the possible future directions of community service in China and, in particular, consider the role of community centers in the new social welfare sector of this nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Migrant families have significantly poorer reading outcomes than locals. • Parents who volunteer in reading programs show better family reading outcomes. • Migrant and low-income parents benefit more from volunteering in reading programs. • More public-nonprofit collaborations can greatly improve family reading outcomes. • Training low-resource parents to engage children in reading yields powerful impact. Reading is one of the most important educational activities for children, and a child's relationship with reading is largely shaped by parental involvement and family environment. Families of lower socioeconomic status often have poor reading environments and less awareness of the importance of reading. This study explores the effects of Rainbow Flowers, a community service organization that promotes parent–child reading in Shenzhen, the city with the largest proportion of migrants in China. Using mixed-methods analyses of a city-wide online survey of 16,328 parent participants (13,523 migrants and 2805 locals) and six volunteer case studies, we compare migrant and local family reading outcomes, examine whether (through quantitative analysis) and how (through qualitative analysis) in-depth parental involvement in parent–child reading is associated with family reading outcomes, and identify which families benefit more from such involvement. Our analyses show that migrant families overall have significantly poorer reading outcomes than locals. However, parents who volunteer in Rainbow Flowers reading programs experience substantially better family reading outcomes. The benefits of parents engaging as both service users and volunteers are especially strong for migrant and low-income families, and include improved reading environment, parental awareness of the value of reading, and child socioemotional development. The findings suggest that parental involvement plays an important role in enhancing family reading outcomes and may improve non-reading-related family well-being, particularly for low-resource families. Public institutions and social service organizations should collaboratively provide accessible reading resources and empower parents to effectively engage their children in joint reading activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The machine learning methods help researchers select the predictors of health status in the older population efficiently. • The machine learning methods automatically capture the complicated relationships between the non-linear predictors and the health outcomes. • The artificial neural networks have the best prediction accuracy in relation to older people's self-reported health. Health and social care services are crucial to old people. The provision of services to the elderly with care needs requires more accurate predictions of the health status of the elderly to rationalize the allocation of the limited social care resources. The traditional analytical methods have proved incapable of predicting the demands of today's society, compared to which machine learning methods can more accurately capture the nonlinear relationships between the variables. To ascertain visually the performance of these machine learning methods regarding the prediction of the elderly's care needs, we designed and verified the experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional development has been recognized as one of the strategies to effectively combat sexual prejudice and negative attitudes against lesbian, gay, bisexual, questioning/queer (LGBQ+) individuals and sexual minorities. Nevertheless, studies related to LGBQ+-inclusive training are rarely found in the Chinese Hong Kong context, where sexual prejudice still prevails without the establishment of antidiscrimination law. Sociocultural considerations, such as religious and parental influences, are obstacles to discussing the reduction of sexual prejudices, both within wider society and social work organizations, without institutional support. This paper aims to understand social workers' perspectives on prejudice reduction training themes and perceived cultural barriers through qualitative in-depth interviews with 67 social workers. Qualitative thematic analysis yielded the following themes: (1) understanding sexuality; (2) initiating training legitimately; (3) contesting religious and cultural assumptions; (4) resolving value and ethical dilemma; (5) selecting relevant knowledge; (6) implementing diverse training strategies. The study suggests that social workers and service providers need to understand how sexual prejudice is manifested in Hong Kong through unique cultural forces. LGBQ+-inclusive content, addressing updated concepts and prejudice-free language, should be incorporated into the training curriculum. Intergroup contact, professional reflection, and experiential learning are suggested as training strategies (190).