The government is not subsidizing enough low-income families and is therefore worsening the living standards of those families' children, a prominent charity said yesterday.
The Taiwan Fund for Children and Families (CCF) yesterday urged the public to help needy children to compensate for the lack of public funds.
The organization said that the number of abused children under the age of 18 is growing every year. According to the Children's Bureau, 5,918 children suffered abuse this year, compared with 4,112 in 1998.
The charity said there was a huge gap between wealthy and poor families in Taiwan. It said that 78.07 percent of families receiving its assistance had an income under NT$20,000, while the average income of families it supported was NT$14,514, more than 6 times less than the average family income of NT$88,678.
However, the organization said 49 percent of the families it helps did not qualify for the low-income family subsidy despite desperately needing financial support.
"The threshold for the government's low-income subsidy has been lowered, but it still does not meet the requirements of needy children," said Hsieh Hsiou-fen (
For a family to receive a low-income subsidy, its combined income must be less than NT$13,313 a month in Taipei City, NT$9,712 in Kaohsiung City, and NT$8,426 in all other jurisdictions.
CCF Deputy Director Ho Shu-chiou (
"Abused children urgently need long-term psychological therapy, and it takes a long time for them to recover, but the government is not providing enough funds for children to undergo the complete therapy process," Ho said.
She added that if the children did not receive proper therapy, there was a real risk that they would become abusers themselves.
Ho said that in addition to the problem of increasing child abuse, the number of abusive parents undergoing rehabilitation was decreasing.
The law states that abusive parents should attend classes and counseling sessions, but compared with the 108 parents who attended programs in 2000 and the 79 parents who attended in 2001, the number last year had dropped dramatically to 16.
CCF said that this was mainly because abusers resisted attending sessions, despite being compulsory, and that there were too many other factors which could not be addressed through lessons and counseling.
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