The Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) plans to offer full support to help 200 to 300 youth from welfare centers achieve self-reliance from an economic and emotional perspective.
Two young men in Gwangju, who had been preparing to enter society, committed suicide due to poverty and loneness in September, prompting calls for fundamental steps to be taken to protect their entry to society.
Residents of child foster welfare, group homes and family foster care facilities, who reach 18 years of age, had to leave the facilities and be self-reliant.
A revision of the Act of Child Welfare, which went into force in June, allows youth at welfare facilities to stay there until they reach age 24 , but more substantial support for their settlement in society is badly needed.
It was in September 2021 when SMG became the first local government to prolong youth’s stay at welfare facilities prior to the amendment of the Act on Child Welfare.
They also redoubled their resettlement funding. SMG recently came up with further steps.
Kim Sun-soon, head of the Women’s & Family Policy Affairs Office at SMG, said, “The first steps to ramp up their resettlement involved economic self-reliance, continuity of their study and support for landing jobs, and second steps focused on psychological and emotional support to help self-reliant youth share joy, anger, sorrow and pleasure while leading a whole life.”
The Seoul Metropolitan Government has doubled down on policies to help youth from welfare facilities achieve self-reliance. A poster and an image views to publicize SMG’s project to help support welfare facility graduates realize self-reliance and offer self-reliance allowances to them.
The latest steps are designed to help welfare facility graduates maintain mentor-mentee relationships and share hardships so they can be solved with support from welfare facility volunteers and patrons, Kim said.
SMG finances costs for the operation of hobby societies and self-reliance groups so self-reliant youths can lead a lively life as members of the groups, and maintain affirmative social relationship networks.
Kim said, “Outcomes of surveys of diverse opinions from soon-to-be child welfare graduates, academic experts and welfare facility workers showed that fundamental support cannot be met without psychological and emotional support,” she said.
It is significant to provide economic support, but it is more important to offer connectivity as a family-like, psychological buttress, she said.
SMG plans to install a self-reliance institution umbrella of the Seoul Metropolitan Government Child Welfare Center, responsible for offering one-stop support to child welfare facility graduates by December.
The body will be charged with providing guidance on mental problems by installing hotlines around the clock and policies on their daily life.
SMG plans to ramp up economic support to child welfare facility graduates. In September 2021, SMG raised their resettlement fund from 5 million won to 10 million won and their monthly self-reliance allowance from 300,000 won to 350,000 won.
SMG plans to boost resettlement fund and monthly self-reliance allowance to 15 million won and 400,000 won, respectively, next year.
Kim, chief of the Women’s & Family Policy Affairs Office, said that SMG will continue to secure SH rental housing units with the goal of offering one unit per person, and supporting monthly rents to occupants of the private sector housing units in connection with steps taken by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT).
Kim emphasized the creation of a positive environment to cheer up child welfare facility graduates.
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