A Comparison of Children's Needs Models in the Australian and Chinese Context

The diverse needs of children have been drawing global attention from both academic and practitioner communities. Based on semi-structured interviews with 23 kin caregivers and five school personnel in the Shijiapu Town of Jilin province, China, this paper presents a needs model for rural school-age children left behind by their migrant parents. This Chinese model is compared to the needs identification mechanism developed by the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth. The paper outlines the common needs of children in different contexts, and also highlights the needs that are not explicit in the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth framework, such as empowerment and agency or perhaps given insufficient weight, such as education. In discussing relationships among different needs, aspects that are missing in the framework it is argued that culture should be more explicitly recognised when defining need.