China will need nearly a million more professional social workers by 2020 as rapid urbanization creates more groups in need, Civil Affairs Minister Li Liguo said on Tuesday, World Social Work Day.
The country has hundreds of thousands of qualified professional social workers but nowhere near enough jobs for them, said Li. There are 4,686 private social work institutions registered in China, according to the minister.
Back in 2011, the government set a target of having 1.45 million social workers by 2020. Li said poverty alleviation is the central task of professional social workers. They mostly provide services to rural "left-behind" children and elderly people whose migrant-worker parents and children are off working in distant cities. Social services are still at an early stage of development in China and there are not enough support policies in place yet, said Huang Shengwei, deputy chief of the Ministry of Civil Affairs' social work department.
On the one hand, there are lots of social workers out of work. On the other, professional social workers are desperately in demand, Huang said. Tang Qunrong, Communist Party chief of a community in Renshou County, Sichuan Province, said many locals really need access to social services, but social work is a tough, poorly-paid job that few people are attracted to.
According to Huang, some areas are exploring ways to improve social services, especially on the more affluent east coast. For example, governments in Guangdong Province fund social work institutions to recruit more staff on the basis that they be assigned to communities, schools and hospitals.
Last year, Guangdong spent over 1.1 billion yuan (168.9 million U.S. dollars) on procurement of social services.
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