Hefei Children’s Welfare Institute, founded in December 1949, is located in Shushan beauty spot in the western suburb of Hefei city. It covers an area of 2.66 hectares and the building area of it is 15,000 square metres. It is a general institute supplies for the orphans, handicapped children and the old people that have no labouring ability, financial income or supporters with an elegant environment and convenient traffic and also is the biggest welfare institute of Anhui province. The institute has more than 600 beds and more than 100 employees specialized in medical care, recovery training, special education and management. The institute has supported more than 20,000 orphans and handicapped children that have no legal guardian, living source since built before 50 years.

With the constantly strengthening of social welfare’s reform, the institute has started the model of family parenting which is called “Sunshine Village” with American Children Association for giving the orphans and handicapped children a better growing environment. The sunshine village was founded in November, 2001 with 10 families as members of the village. Each family is composed of the couple who is selected through a strict recruiting process with good overall quality and 6 orphans or handicapped children that are cared by this couple. The head of village takes charge of the management, guidance and supervision to every family. The institute also assesses each family periodically and gives the families award or punishment according the result of assessment. Through this assessment system, the orphans and handicapped children are guaranteed to grow up healthily and happily. The goal of the new parenting model is to establish a warm family environment for those orphans and handicapped children, making them enjoy the parents’ love and warmth from parent-child relationship and to help them establish healthy personality. And so the children can get more opportunities to be connected with the society and improve their ability to fit into the society.

The institute sticks to the guideline of “upbringing, education, medical treatment and healthiness”, actively absorbs and employs the talented people, strengthens and improves the overall quality of the stuff, makes efforts to the recovery treatment of the handicapped children and special education for making them return back society.