• Journal of the Korean Society of Child Welfare
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• no.58
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• pp.171-203
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• 2017

There has been a growing number of research about children's development indicators and child well-being indicators. After the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and concluding observations on the second report of Korea, the effort to monitor and measure children's rights and the use of child rights indicators has increased within policy and academic research. However, few indicators provide a realization of children's rights. The purpose of this paper was to analyze children's own perceptions of their rights and to develop a children's rights index to measure children's rights. In this study, a children's rights index was developed from 38 indicators categorized into nine components and four domains (survival rights, development rights, protection rights, and participation rights) to measure children's rights. Data were gathered from 17,000 elementary and middle school children and their parents in 16 cities. The survey revealed significant differences in the children's rights index by region and age group. There was also a correlation between the economic circumstances of both households and communities and the children's rights index. In the light of the findings, it is suggested that there is a need to increase public investment on children and to raise awareness of children's rights in order to improve children's rights and to decrease disparity.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.183-196
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of case management in child welfare facilities to determine what the inhibiting factors as well as complementary factors are. For this purpose, data from 181 workers in community children's centers and 96 workers in child protection agencies and foster care centers were analyzed, the analyzed by using SPSS 21.0 program. In the case of community children's center interpersonal skills, case management guidelines, super vision, and network utilization were the influential factors while in other child welfare facilities, personal inhibitory factors, social welfare work experience, case management experience, and network utilization were the affecting factors. The implications reveal that social welfare practice should enhance the interpersonal skills of the workers, strengthen the supervision system, and provide a clear case management guideline. It is also important to set up a network of all local child welfare facilities and strengthen cooperation and mutual support among the institutions within the network.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.761-770
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to examine improvements of after-school care policy for elementary school-age children based on children's rights in the community. After-school care is important to support children right of survive and protect, as well as the right to development and participation. To support integrated child rights through the policy, local government's duty is growing in the Covid-19 world. Therefore, the main policy of out-of-school care is analyzed from the perspective of children's rights. Current after-care policy focuses on the right of protection privileges. Providing a safe facility is important, but there is a lack of policy design to expand children's options to learn by various activity which can be utilized with community resources as care contents. The role of government to this is requested to supplement accountability, fairness, democracy and public interest more than over quantitative expansion of services. This study presented an alternative based on the universal elementary care providing happy after-school hours.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.297-322
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• 2009

Child policy has focused on needy children with special emphasis on residual services but youth policy has implemented to promote capabilities of general adolescents by various activities. The fragmented implementation of child-youth policy by several ministries resulted in possible redundancy of target groups and insufficient service delivery system. Thus, the Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Family Affairs has pushed forward to integrate service delivery systems in child-youth policy after the former Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Government Youth Commission were integrated as part of a government reorganization plan. The purpose of this study is to review limitations of Lee Myung-bak government's plan to integrate child-youth policy and to make important suggestions for effective integration. Lee Myung-bak government's plan seeks to help children and adolescents prepare for the future and move forward with dreams and hope. However, this plan has fatal problems of overemphasizing the efficiency of finance without expansion of budget for children and adolescents. To achieve well-being tailored to one's life cycle, the full-scale expansion of budget is indispensible through the induction of the special fund or the special tax for children and adolescents. Fortunately, Lee Myung-bak government recognized child-youth policy as the social investment that would heighten national competitiveness in the long term, but there was insufficient child-youth policy infrastructure for new implementation. Therefore, Lee Myung-bak government needs a new design for integrated and universal child-youth policy that should take into account national human resource development plan and its economic development policy. The public responsibility for children and adolescents should be strengthened and, in addition, the network function in service delivery system should be complemented.

• Journal of Legislation Research
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• no.41
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• pp.43-85
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• 2011

Child and youth welfare law in Korea is vague and complex. In a narrow sense it means the research on the provisions of the Child Welfare Act. In a broad sense it embraces all of the social welfare system regarding to the protection for children and youth. Regardless of the scope of child and youth welfare law it should be cleared what the term of child and youth means in Korean legal regulation. Historically, child protection in Korea was based on the good intentions of individuals to protect war orphan children from poverty or danger after the end of the Korean War. It is the story of the evolving status of children from being viewed as dependant of the parents to becoming rights-based citizens, even not in Constitution. In Korea neither parents nor children have constitutionally recognized right. According to Korean Constitution the parents have only the obligation to educate their children. And the state ist obliged to improve the welfare of the youth(section 34). In compliance with this article there are lots of statutes regulating youth welfare. This article reviews the legal definition of child and youth to test the uncertain definition of child and youth welfare in relation to the treatment of children's and youth's legal status in Korea. According to the Child Welfare Act child is the person under age of 18, while the legal definition of youth oscillates between the person under the age of 19 and the person over the age 9 to the age of 23. As a result child welfare is often used as the synonym of youth welfare, and vice versa. The lack of the arrangement of the legal definition of child and youth is based on the historical reasons that the legal definitions of youth (under the age of 19 or over the age 9 to the age of 23) newly appeared in the statutes regulating youth welfare, whereas the Child Welfare Act still maintained the definition of child under the age of 18. In order to get rid of the confusion of the definition of the child and youth, a part of certain statues should combine with another Act according to the purpose of the individual amended statutes. And the definition of child and youth should be subdivided into 3 or 4 classes, namely infant(0-6), child(7-13), youth(14-18) and young adult(19-26). Furthermore this article proposes a reform of the existing legal system pursuant to the nature of the law, i.g. whether the issued or amended Act takes on a selective(residual) or universal character.

• Journal of Family Resource Management and Policy Review
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.87-102
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• 2021

Child abuse and neglect are recently increasing in Korea, and although the government has actively improved the child protection system, the number of abused children and the rate of cases judged as abuse have continuously risen. Given that 75% of child abusers are parents, child abuse and neglect are expected to recur. To prevent such a recurrence, various intervention programs for abused children and their parents are required. The purpose of this study were to design a recovery support service process and investigate the effectiveness of pilot program for families of origin, including neglected(protected) children, to improve the system by which these programs are operated, and formulate policy alternatives that reinforce "family preservation" principles. The pilot program was implemented from June to November 2020 in 4-local healthy family support center. The number of program participants and the frequency of participation in each other differed, because of the difference in number of confirmed coronavirus cases in each region and the requirement for social distancing. Through the program, a community-based service process was developed for neglected(protected) children and their parents, and cooperative networks between related facilities and institutions were established. The study formulated the following recommendations: First, a cooperation system among government departments mandated to provide different services to neglected(protected) children is needed. Second, wider and various channels through which abused children can avail of protective services should be developed within communities. Third, more stable environments for program operation should be cultivated, and cooperative partnerships should be sought for knowledge sharing among relevant government departments. Another necessary measure is for a center to develop its own business model, in which the duplication of services provided by involved organizations is avoided. Finally, clear guidelines, administrative standards, and specific plans for program operation should be arranged. Also regional characteristics are maintained, but services should be standardized.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.143-169
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• 2017

The Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment, etc. of Child Abuse Crimes intends to encourage reporting and punishment of child abuse by using the concept of 'crime' in child abuse cases. Article 10 of the Act imposes duty to report child abuse on a number of different professions, including medical professionals. Currently, more than 80% of child abuse cases occur among family members and the detection rate of child abuse is as low as 0.5% in Korea. On the other hand, medical professionals can identify child abuse relatively clearly with specific medical opinions. Therefore, it is necessary that medical professions are informed of this duty and does not bear disincentive from reporting. This paper makes policy suggestions in this regard. First, it is necessary that medical students and medical professionals receive regular education about the obligation to report child abuse. Education should include details of the reporting duty, as well as the fact that there is legal obligation to report even if the child abuse is "suspicious", not certain. Second, it is imperative to establish and implement protective programs for medical professionals who report child abuse. The current law provides a rough framework for protection of people who report child abuse, but it is necessary to produce detailed guidelines that are applicable in the context of medical setting. Education for medical students and medical professionals should include the contents of these guidelines, so that they do not hesitate reporting because they fear the aftermath of reporting. Third, it is highly recommended that physicians use the national Baby/Infant Health Checkup Program as an opportunity to detect child abuse. In Korea, the Baby/Infant Health Checkup Program provides physicians to periodically monitor health condition of all babies and children until the age of 71 months. In order to utilize this program for early detection of child abuse, it is imperative that the bBaby/Infant Health Checkup Program is modified to involve child abuse experts and medical professionals who participate in the program are educated about child abuse.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.67 no.2
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• pp.285-310
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to verify qualitatively and quantitatively practitioners' perceptions of functions and roles of community child center which plays a pivotal role in afterschool care in Korea. To achieve its purposes, we investigate environments, services, workers, service users, and delivery systems of community child center. As a result, 4 types of perception of community child center(service integration-oriented type focusing on professional workers, care-oriented type based on child care center's physical environment, delivering service-oriented type working in collaboration with schools, and individual case management-oriented type) were examined. These results were also classified into two categories. One focused on the importance of workers and supports for service environments. The other focused more on the functions of community child center to find commonality and originality in other afterschool care systems. This study can be valuable in understanding practitioners' different perception on functions and roles of community child center which have not yet been confirmed statistically. The results allow us to apply diverse practitioners' perceptions to the practice, and to elicit discussions regarding improved practice directions for managing community child center. It also can provide useful baseline data in policy decisions and enforcement.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.113-141
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• 2017

Child welfare centers not only protect children at the first line of community, but also perform the tasks of systematic social service by linking the various resources of community and establishing a support system for children. Making quantitative growth, child welfare centers are faced with a request for operational systemicity and professionalism in terms of quality. This study set out to investigate the effects of professional capability, psychological capital, and career-related continuous learning on the job performance among practitioners of child welfare centers. For those purposes, the study conducted a survey by mail with those who were working for child welfare centers in Busan and Gyeongnam Province from March 2 to 25, 2016. Of the collected questionnaires, 550 whose responses were sincere were used in the final analysis. The analysis results show that psychological capital had the biggest influence on the job performance among practitioners of child welfare centers. Furthermore, in the chief of child welfare centers, the more having of professional capability, the more job performance they experienced. However, in the front-line social workers, professional capability did not affect the job performance. Those results indicate that the expansion of psychological capital should be a top priority to help the practitioners of child welfare centers improve their job performance. Based on those findings, the study offered some implications for the organizational management of child welfare centers.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Child Welfare
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• no.55
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• pp.87-111
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• 2016

This study aimed to examine how video-recorded hearsay statements are taken in trial with regard to testimony of children less than the age of 13 in terms of children's rights, and to assess policy implications for the purpose of improving the current system. This study analyzed the precedents in accordance with their facts and contents. The analysis of the contents dealt with the main issues of trials concerning the sexual violence of children less than the age of 13. Specifically, This study selected precedents dealing with video-recorded hearsay statements, which are children's indirect statement, as core legal issues; examined the credibility(probative power) and admissibility of video-recorded statements; and prepared systemic alternatives in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the international standards for the protection of children's rights. As a result, this study proposed creating and utilizing indicators to assess evidence admissibility and the credibility of video-recoded statements in trial, thus reducing judgement through judges' discretion. Also proposed are new regulations with regard to cross-examination coverage of the hearsay statement of a child in a sexual violence trial of concerning children less than the age of 13. This study suggests an improvement in legal policies, based given that children's rights are more vulnerable than those of adults in trial. Nevertheless, this study is limited in that it selected and reviewed only among precedents that are in the public record.