Feature Osan City Channels Administrative Power into Caring for the Precious Gift of Children

Child welfare in Osan City (Mayor Jo Yong-ho) begins with caring for children's daily lives and extends to recovery and self-reliance after crisis. For children needing after-school care, the city connects them with childcare facilities within their residential areas, and provides emergency evening and holiday care for sudden childcare gaps. For children unable to receive protection at home, counseling, treatment, living assistance, and follow-up management follow.

Vulnerable children receive more than single-type support; the city reviews their health, learning, emotions, and family relationships together and connects necessary services. After protection ends, the city supports children in preparing for self-reliance so they can settle stably in society.

Osan City continues care and protection, family recovery, and self-reliance support tailored to children's circumstances and growth stages. Ensuring support does not lapse at necessary moments is the direction of Osan City's child welfare system.

34 Childcare Facilities...Emergency Care Available Evenings and Weekends

The foundation of Osan City's child welfare is childcare facilities accessible near residential areas. The city operates 34 facilities in total, including 23 Together Growing Centers, 2 School Care Centers, and 9 Community Children's Centers, expanding support from after-school care to evening, holiday, and weekend emergency childcare.

Among these, 16 facilities—14 Together Growing Centers and 2 Community Children's Centers—provide "anytime emergency childcare service." For families needing sudden childcare, the city provides care from 7 a.m. to midnight on weekday evenings, weekends, and holidays.

The city has also granularly reflected different household schedules. Community Children's Centers operate weekend and evening care, and one Together Growing Center has extended its operating hours. During school breaks, 4 Community Children's Centers and 3 Together Growing Centers provide gap-filling care.

The city is also connecting the functions of individual facilities centered on hub childcare centers. It has established inter-facility cooperation systems and operates capacity-building training for staff and common education for children, creating a structure that enhances childcare capacity across the entire region. Rather than simply increasing the number of facilities, the city is supplementing both service hours and quality to reduce childcare gaps.

Seamless Support from Residential Care to Family Foster Care and Self-Reliance

For crises that cannot be resolved through routine care alone, the public protection system operates. Osan City operates child abuse reporting and investigation 24 hours a year-round. When at-risk children are discovered, necessary measures follow from protection planning through counseling, treatment, and follow-up management.

Child protection agencies, shelters for abused children, and group homes divide roles according to children's circumstances and protection periods. Children requiring urgent protection live in shelters to regain psychological stability, while children requiring long-term protection prioritize family-type care such as adoptive homes and foster homes. If no suitable family is available, children prepare for self-reliance while living in group homes. Child protection agencies assist in the recovery of victims and their families and continue case management to prevent abuse recurrence.

Support does not cease after family foster care, adoption, or return to biological families. The city regularly checks the care situation and daily adaptation of children in care, and connects necessary support even after the protection environment changes.

Self-reliant young adults whose protection has ended receive financial education and certification acquisition programs. Rather than stopping at separating children from crisis, Osan City broadens support to recovery, adaptation in new environments, and social settlement—the core of Osan City's child protection system.

Addressing Growth and Family Function of Vulnerable Children

Vulnerable children require approaches that examine overall household environments rather than fragmented support focused solely on the child. Through Dream Start, Osan City comprehensively assesses living conditions of vulnerable children and families under 12 years old and pregnant women, and connects necessary services.

Currently, 133 families with 199 members are receiving integrated child case management. Based on four areas—physical and health, cognitive and language, emotional and behavioral, and parental and family—the city determines support directions for each household and coordinates welfare, education, and medical resources. Providing 32 types of essential and customized services this year, the city focuses on restoring both children's growth and families' childcare functions.

The city also supports enrollment in Stepping Stone Savings Accounts to help children prepare for adulthood. This system enables children in care, those from basic living assistance and next-tier poor households to build self-reliance foundations for education, employment, and housing through savings. Currently, 1,786 residents in Osan are enrolled.

Osan City's strength in child welfare lies in the fact that care and protection, case management and self-reliance support do not remain separate initiatives. The structure begins with care protecting children's ordinary days, proceeds to detecting and protecting those in crisis, and continues necessary support through family recovery and children's self-reliance.

Osan Mayor Jo Yong-ho said, "So that children do not miss opportunities for care and learning due to family circumstances or sudden crises, I will seamlessly connect from daily care through protection to self-reliance," and "I will work with the community to create a dense child welfare system so that all children can grow healthy in safe environments."