Shanghai’s municipal and district governments, busy creating whole new urban districts, are also experimenting in social service delivery, in some cases contracting service provider NGOs. But, Chang Tianle (常天乐) reports, development of the sector remains piecemeal, still largely dependent on individual relationships and agreements.
Shanghai Lequn Social Work Service (上海乐群社工服务社), China’s first professional agency dedicated to placing social workers, started four years ago with a CNY 100,000 (USD 12,658) contract from the local government.
“At that time, Pudong Social Development Bureau felt the need to send social workers to schools for migrants’ children. So we set up this agency to provide the service” recalls Zhu Bei (朱蓓), one of Lequn’s six founding members. All six went to serve in schools that year.
They worked full-time in migrant schools, relating to the students in a different way from the teachers. Zhu and her colleagues organised after-school activities and helped students play an active role in the life of the school, while also trying to understand their personal needs and problems and share this understanding with other staff.
In addition to an allowance from the government, the social workers received salaries of several hundred yuan each month from the schools.
“Our work bridged the gap between students, schools and the government. We are trusted by all three parties,” says Zhu.
Moreover, through various activities outside school, Lequn helps migrant children adapt and integrate into Shanghai communities. “From these years’ work, we found that many of the children are isolated from the local community and people. So we want to bring them closer to the rest of the society and increase their confidence and communication skills,” Zhu explains.
Four years later, Lequn has doubled the number of staff and expanded its service to hospitals, homes for older people and local communities. As in the migrant schools, they provide services that are beyond the scope of traditional hospitals and retirement homes—such as spending time with poorer patients and offering them practical advice, or holding community events for older people. Institutions have recognised the value of these services and proved willing to pay for them.
Zhu says that government support is critical for them, even though in most cases they are contracted by institutions rather than by government departments. Pudong District government now provides funding for every retirement home to hire a social worker, and the Shanghai municipal government pays for a total of 2,500 social workers to help juvenile delinquents and people released from prison. Most of them are placed through three large, close-to-government agencies, and end up working in sub-district Street Affairs Offices (街道办事处, urban China’s lowest tier of government). However, policies to promote social and community work have also opened many opportunities for small and more independent agencies like Lequn.
Leading edge
“The Shanghai government, particularly in Pudong, is the most advanced in China in terms of supporting non-government service providers,” comments Yang Tuan (杨团), a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher who also sits on board of several Shanghai non-profit organisations.
The real breakthrough can be traced back to 1996, when the government invited the Shanghai YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) to manage a community centre in Pudong. It was the first time that a city government in China worked with an NGO to provide a social service. Ten years later, the model has been copied around China.
The YMCA now runs six community centres in Shanghai with government providing free premises and, in some case, utilities or equipment. The “Y” has increased ifs staff from fifteen in 1991 to nearly 90 this year, and over much the same period direct beneficiaries of its services have risen from a few thousand to nearly 900,000. Half of the YMCA’s projects are now fully or partly funded by the local government.
Last October, Pudong district government issued a policy circular (办法) about funding non-government public service providers and welfare organisations. Besides government procurement contracts, such organisations are now eligible to receive cash grants (or land, buildings and equipment) from the district government as well as help with payment on interest of bank loans. The document also encourages public and corporate donations to the social welfare sector.
“The government is making a conscious effort to retreat from some social services and give NGOs some space to fill,” says Shanghai YMCA’s General Secretary Wu Jianrong (吴建荣). “However, it does not have a clear and consistent vision of how to do it, or how far to retreat.” Sometimes, good initiatives supported by one official have to stop if that person moves to a different position and a successor does not value the idea.
Among the six community centres the YMCA manages, no two operate in the same way. The Association has to negotiate hard with each relevant government agency on what services to provide and how to share costs and responsibilities.
In most cases, the government only provides facilities and covers part of the cost, while the YMCA is responsible for providing services on a very tight budget. “In order to provide quality services, sometimes we have to subsidise the centres first and recover the cost a few years later,” says Wu. “But we do not want to be contracted by the government just because we are cheaper.”
Unfair competition
What really annoys him is the unfair treatment the YMCA encounters. Over the past few years, government agencies have turned many services they once ran into non-profit organizations. For example, Shanghai has nominally converted detention centres (shourong) for vagrants into independent “people organizations” (minjian zuzhi). In practice, however, they continue to receive substantial support from the government—much more than NGOs, like the YMCA, that were established without government backing. “We are competing on an unequal basis with NGOs created by government, they can mobilise much more government resources than us,” Wu says.
The director of a government-backed foundation in Pudong, who declined to be named, agrees. His foundation, designed to finance social development programmes, mostly sponsors projects approved and supported by the government. “The complicated relationship in the government makes us difficult to play our role in full and support grassroots organisations without much government background,” he says.
Wu also feels that some government officials treat NGOs as subordinate instead of equal partners. “Working with the government for ten years, I still expect more understanding and respect from them,” he says.
His view is shared by Yang Tuan, who says it will take some time yet for government to define its role and NGOs role in public services.
She says that initiatives like the YMCA-run Luoshan Community Centre (罗山会馆) are encouraging, but without a clear framework and goal on the government’s side, things are unlikely to change overnight.
The lack of a clear system and guidelines also leads to the lax implementation and assessment of pilot policies and programmes.
In Shanghai’s Luwan District (卢湾区) those community centres managed by the YMCA are used most by residents according to an evaluation report by the district’s Peoples Political Consultative Conference. Centres run by government-created agencies are frequently under-used, despite having more government funding. But this survey has not yet helped YMCA to win more contracts from the government.
Wu says the poor government evaluation system for social services gives no incentives to some NGOs to provide better services, and thus hurts the welfare sector as a whole.
In Yang’s opinion, the remedy lies in changing government’s mindset. “When the government puts people and fairness in the first place, real changes will talk place in their behavior,” she says.
Although the inconsistency and uncertainty in government attitudes and policies may hinder the development of independent social service providers, Yang points out that it also gives some leeway for flexible organisations to explore new frontiers.
She says that some NGOs simply blame the government and society not providing sufficient support while neglect their own capacity building and self-discipline.
“If they look at the brighter side of individual government agencies, there is still much space for NGOs to grow.”
NGOs should learn to cope with the government while providing services demanded by the society, she adds.
The challenge of growth
For organisations like YMCA, growth is not too difficult to achieve as it owns several properties in Shanghai, and these bring continuous revenue to deliver social services. But for smaller and more grassroots organisations like Lequn, expansion is much more challenging. Government contracts are far from enough for them to survive and grow.
Zhu Bei from Lequn says that there are many areas in Shanghai that social workers like her can fill in the gap. But the problem is who is going to pay for the service.
“To survive, we need to design good programs, create markets and find people to fund it,” she says.
She is quite positive about Lequn’s future, saying its achievements have brought much recognition and many contracts. Its clients include government agencies, public and private schools, hospitals and retirement homes. Lequn recently won a contract from Love Action (爱心行动), a Hong Kong-based charitable group, to facilitate a health care program in two schools for migrant children. It expects to implement the program in all such schools in Pudong.
As Yang Tuan points out, Shanghai is pioneering in China in terms of nurturing a non-governmental social service sector. NGOs like YMCA and Lequn are on the right track, she says. But for NGOs that do not provide conventional social services, the environment is not as supportive and friendly.
“In Shanghai, you do not see so many advocacy groups or organisations working in areas like HIV/AIDS as you see in places like Beijing,” she says.
Nevertheless, Shanghai, particularly Pudong government’s gesture and initiatives in encouraging NGOs to deliver social services have set good examples to the rest of the country, she concludes.