Child Welfare League Foundation 2021 Annual Report

The Child Welfare League Foundation (CWLF) established a public policy platform — 1420Hz Platform for children to voice out, providing a safe place online for adolescents from 14 years old to 20 years old to voice out their opinions.

Worldwide campaign demonstrates why your nudes aren't safe with anyone, not even your parents 1 in 3 teens have seen non-consensually shared nudes

Though our daily life has become more and more convenient with more recreations, according CWLF’s survey on 5th to 9th graders in Taiwan, students’ subjective life satisfaction scores have reached a new low in recent years. In 2017, the score was 79.2/100; however, when it came to 2020, it dropped by 6.5 points to 72.7/100. Children felt unsatisfied about their life in personal (poor diet, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, feeling lonely), family (lack of family support), and school (academic stress, lack of peer support) aspects. It was no surprise that children felt more and more unhappy about their life.

COVID-19 pandemic, which has been spreading across the globe for nearly three years now as its effect first showed in 2020, has brought severe impact to the world, but has it also aggravated difficulties on parenting? On the eve of Children’s Day, Child Welfare League Foundation (CWLF) published this year’s (2022) “Current Parenting Status & Post-Pandemic Family Playtime Trend Survey.” Per the survey, even though there are nearly 90% of parents with children younger than 6 years old who feel that parenting is satisfying, there are still more than half of the parents who feel “defeated (56%), stressed (53.6%).” The main reason that has caused parenting stress was not necessarily that parents “felt difficult to raise a child;” instead, it was that most parents have not adapted to the situation.

Child Welfare League Foundation (CWLF), and other organizations including Child Health Alliance Taiwan, Taiwan Pediatric Association, Taiwan Fund for Children and Families, and Raising Children Medical Foundation, along with cross-party legislators from the Child and Youth Rights Promotion Committee of Legislative Yuan, Wan-Yu Wang, Wan-An Chiang, Mei-Ling Loh, Chen-Yuan Chiu and Hung-An Kao, held a press conference on March 17th. The attendants collectively examined current fertility policies and called the Executive Yuan to establish a “Low Birthrate Response Unit”, so that implementation of low birthrate policies can be regularly monitored, the needs of parents will be responded as top priority, and comprehensive parenting support can be provided for the parents.

Child Welfare League Foundation (CWLF) was happy to lead a Circle of Learning event titled Prevalence Survey, Social Education and Advocacy on Corporal Punishment: A Case of Taiwan hosted by The International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse & Neglect (ISPCAN). In this event, Li-Fang Pai, CEO of CWLF, and Chih-Hung Wu, Senior International Specialist of CWLF, closely examined corporal punishment (CP) issue in Taiwan with three different approaches: what are the existing CP policies and regulations in Taiwan, what the research told us, and what CWLF as a child-focused organization has done to prompt social changes.

In this generation of rapidly growing 4G and 5G internet speed, ubiquitous cellphone use seems to be also satisfying the everyday needs of digital natives. Data research, doing homework, recreational use - even social networking exists in the virtual world. According to CWLF survey, 66% of the children believe that, “It’s easier to make friends over the

After the COVID-19 pandemic pushed all levels of school to shift classrooms to online platforms in May, parents started to show concerns over their children’s online learning condition and the risk of getting Internet addiction. Some parents may also need to face reduced working hours or job losses. Still, these challenges would be magnified in the rural areas. CWLF conducted the “Online Learning and Living Conditions of Children in Rural Areas ” survey during the pandemic this year. It was found that in the rural areas, most families’ income reduced during the pandemic. Moreover, children needed to face challenges of access to digital device or Internet or lack of family support. Compared with children living in the cities with affluent resources, the urban-rural digital divide was alarming.