Social work facilities building child-friendly environments. Photo: IC PHOTO

The concept of child-friendliness aligns with the developmental needs of children as active participants and reflects the people-centered approach of new urbanization. Creating child-friendly cities means envisioning urban futures “from a child’s perspective,” ensuring that public spaces cater to children’s life stages. Major cities across China have rolled out strategic plans for child-friendly urban development, continuously improving children’s well-being. The transformation of this concept into reality underscores the necessity of embedding social work practices into urban development. Rooted in altruistic values and scientific methods, social work plays a vital role in safeguarding children’s rights, expanding their developmental opportunities, and delivering public services, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of child-friendly environments.

Demonstrating professionalism

In child-focused social work, helping services involve interactions in which social workers address children’s needs through tailored interventions. Social workers design carefully structured services to meet these needs, while children, in turn, provide their perspectives and responses. Helping services should not be narrowly understood as mere “gamification” or confined to a handful of recreational group activities. Instead, they must be understood as strategic efforts aimed at achieving practical goals—strengthening children’s connections with their environment and fostering holistic development.

Social work in child-friendly cities demonstrates two key professional attributes. First, it applies specialized methods and techniques. Social work encompasses casework, group work, and community work, each corresponding to distinct models, which, in turn, incorporate a range of practical skills. In contemporary community work, for example, the area development model can be employed, targeting all community residents—including children—as service recipients. By mobilizing public participation and conducting in-depth interviews, social workers can identify existing community challenges and assess residents’ actual needs. Internal and external community resources can be tapped, and a community development plan can be formulated to address existing issues. 

At the same time, community leaders can be cultivated to enhance the community’s self-service level, so as to strengthen residents’ sense of belonging and cohesion, and build a harmonious community. In child-friendly city development, social work must apply established methods and techniques, such as establishing a children’s council (observation group). The genuine participation of children can promote in-depth discussions on community issues, while their creativity and imagination can inject vitality and hope into the resolution of community issues, contributing to a more child-friendly community environment. 

The second professional attribute is continuous outreach and support. Such activities require in-depth engagement in the communities where the service recipients are located. For example, Suzhou’s “Happy Bay for Children” initiative primarily serves children in difficult circumstances, followed by those with serious illnesses, severe disabilities, poverty, or single-parent families, and eventually extends to all families with children. It provides a structured array of services, ranging from prevention and protection to education and social integration. Social work is inherently a gradual and continuous process, encouraging change among service recipients to help fulfill the program’s objectives. Initiatives like “Happy Bay for Children” address crucial issues in children’s growth and development, which clearly require ongoing efforts and an emphasis on long-term outcomes. Even after the conclusion of the project, follow-up services should continue to ensure sustained positive social support and incentives for children.

Integrating resources

The results of the seventh national census show that China’s population aged 0-14 is 253.38 million, accounting for 17.95% of the total. This represents a 1.35% increase from 2010 (the sixth national census). Many cities in China have positioned the establishment of social work stations (or rooms) as key hubs for primary-level social governance, actively promoting “five-sector collaboration” (government, community, social workers, charities, and volunteers) to mobilize both local and external resources, thereby strengthening the support system for children’s services. Social workers play a vital role in neighborhood elderly care centers, children’s care homes, and other community spaces, assisting elderly individuals in need, serving children in difficult circumstances, and connecting various groups requiring support. 

In the face of complex community situations, social workers often adopt an integrated perspective, viewing the client’s issues and context in a comprehensive manner. They apply professional theories and methods flexibly, tapping into the client’s latent abilities while integrating and connecting available resources from the client’s surroundings. This allows for intervention at multiple levels and dimensions. In practice, focusing on the urgent need for children’s healthy development and the classified protection of children facing hardships, social workers expand beyond individual casework. They break down institutional and departmental silos, proactively linking government departments, local businesses, schools, and social organizations to mobilize the resources needed for their young clients. These resources are quickly delivered to the children, while existing services within the children’s network are coordinated and integrated to improve efficiency and reduce overlap. For example, in the Jinji Lake Subdistrict of Suzhou Industrial Park, a Child-Friendly Alliance was formed with departments such as the All-China Women’s Federation and local enterprises and institutions, pooling and streamlining resources to support ongoing women and children’s initiatives.  

Resource integration emphasizes the systematic and effective nature of assistance services, focusing on mobilizing social forces and fostering collaboration among multiple stakeholders to link and integrate resources to provide refined services for children.  

Advocating for children

In the new era, the building of child-friendly cities represents both a new phenomenon and a new task. In its early stages, this process typically follows a social planning model, where experts’ knowledge is central. This approach involves understanding the mission, purpose, policies, and resources of building child-friendly cities to establish clear goals, select optimal strategies, and then, considering the real conditions of urban development, mobilize and allocate resources. 

At the conclusion, the implementation is evaluated. This process follows a top-down approach, emphasizing the role of planners to ensure decision-making efficiency and service quality. 

However, a clear shortcoming is the low participation of residents and children, who show little interest in and investment in child-friendly city initiatives. This can lead to the creation of a “passive dependent group.” 

Given the government-driven nature of this effort, children—the primary stakeholders—are often absent from active participation, with their needs and preferences being expressed by parents and teachers on their behalf—delaying or distorting the communication of their true needs. Thus, professionals are essential for advocating on behalf of children.

Social work has a long-standing tradition of advocating for the interests of clients and engaging in social action. Social workers, equipped with professional education and training, can leverage their positions at the forefront of child services to accurately gather information by listening to children’s needs. Through professional service methods, they can internally stimulate the inner potential of children, enhance their confidence, and encourage and guide them to actively participate in and integrate into urban and rural social life. They can also directly advocate for and encourage appropriate responses to the real difficulties they face, guiding them towards success gradually. 

Externally, since the difficulties children face in their growth and development are often rooted in complex social issues rather than solely individual concerns, social workers need to speak out boldly on behalf of children, proposing suggestions to optimize and improve social policies. This ensures that children receive the resources and services they deserve, thereby promoting their healthy development. Social workers also examine system designs from the perspective of children, ensuring that child-friendly city initiatives truly benefit every child. This involves promoting the adaptation of communities, streets, schools, hospitals, venues, and commercial areas to be more child-friendly, empowering and strengthening child service recipients, and emphasizing the importance of friendly social policies and rights protection. 

Children are the future, and addressing their needs requires respecting their voices and opinions. This is the essence of building a child-friendly city. By “viewing from a child’s perspective,” we can uncover many things adults often overlook. Of course, the vital role of social workers in advocating for children is central to this process.

In the course of China’s modernization drive, various regions have actively responded to the call for high-quality development and initiated the development of child-friendly cities and other related work. As proposed in several strategic planning documents for child-friendly cities, the vision is one of “childlike innocence and friendly unity,” aiming to build a city that meets children’s developmental needs, supports their healthy growth, and aligns with the city’s future development goals. This involves not only creating colorful, intergenerational facilities for children but also establishing service stations that engage children in nearby communities, integrating child-friendly neighborhoods that reflect local culture, and enhancing services through social work. In the future, it is expected to see more social work elements and inspiring cases within perceptible child-friendly scenarios. 

Ma Defeng is a professor from the Center for Chinese Urbanization Studies at Soochow University.

Edited by ZHAO YUAN