In addition to formal foster care in families, some state child welfare institutions also provide alternative care in family groups with a paid house mother on the site of the institution. This type of alternative care raises questions about whether this grouping is sufficient to simulate the benefits of family-based care in relation to outcomes for children when they are growing up, and the impact on their transition to adulthood. As an intermediate step of a smaller family grouping but still within an institution, with a paid house mother, is this sufficient to achieve the social inclusion expected for other children who grow up in the community with their birth or foster family?

The chapter examines the experience of seven young people in one city who had lived in this arrangement. It considers the differences for these young people during their childhood and as they prepared for possibilities to leave the family group care in the institution.

Approach to alternative care at the institution

The Urumqi Children's Welfare Institution is the only welfare institution for children in the city. It was founded in 1947. At the time of the research in 2012, it had 184 staff and more than 300 children. The children were from many ethnic groups because the region is diverse, with a large Chinese Muslim minority. Most of the children had communicable diseases or disabilities (90%), mainly cerebral palsy and learning disabilities. A few children with disabilities at the institution were not state wards. Their families were paying for them to receive therapy services and special education while they lived at the welfare institution. This unusual practice for child welfare institutions helps families remain intact and provides the child with access to disability support not otherwise available in the community. Some other welfare institutions are beginning to develop this practice in order to try to reduce the number of families who leave their children to become state wards so that they receive the treatment they need.

The welfare institution mainly provides family-based alternative care, including formal and informal foster care. It also provides family group care at the institution, which simulates family households in apartments built at the welfare institution.