Busan City Promotes Establishment of Comprehensive Support Plan for At-Risk Youth

Busan City has established and is implementing the ‘2023 Comprehensive Support Plan for At-Risk Youth’ with the goal of creating ‘Busan, a city where youth can freely pursue their dreams and want to live.’

Busan City Hall.

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This plan consists of four major strategies: ▲building a dense youth safety net and revitalizing related projects ▲strengthening youth welfare support through public-private cooperation ▲providing customized services tailored to specific situations and characteristics ▲enhancing the youth protection system against changing harmful environments, supported by 29 key implementation tasks.

Specifically, based on a youth safety net that connects youth resources within the region, Busan City and the district/county Youth Counseling and Welfare Centers (16 locations) will take the lead in providing customized integrated services such as counseling, protection, education, independence support, and medical assistance to youth according to different types of crises, in cooperation with the Office of Education, Police Agency, and youth welfare facilities.

In particular, this year, four new projects will be launched. ▲By strengthening the linkage system between the city and the Office of Education, the plan aims to eliminate blind spots in education and welfare for out-of-school youth. Additionally, ▲the functions of the Youth Comprehensive Support Center, a youth support facility, will be reinforced (including construction for fire-vulnerable facilities) to provide a safe living environment for youth users.

Furthermore, the policy advisory body for the youth integrated support system, ▲the ‘Youth Welfare Deliberation Committee,’ will establish operational regulations to enhance the committee’s effectiveness, and ▲opportunities for overseas cultural experiences will be provided to exemplary youth from financially disadvantaged families.

Support will be strengthened by increasing the number of ▲Youth Companions who provide one-on-one counseling and services to at-risk youth, and ▲special youth support will be expanded to cover eight areas including living support and health support for at-risk youth facing social and economic difficulties. ▲The support amount for guaranteeing the health rights of low-income female youth will be increased, and ▲the independence support allowance for youth leaving youth shelters has also been raised. To create schools free of violence, the Busan-style ‘Making School Violence Zero!’ pilot project, which was launched last year, will be extended for two more years and expanded to five pilot schools.

Mayor Park Hyung-jun stated, “We will build a dense youth safety net and lead various public-private cooperation and support to eliminate welfare blind spots for at-risk youth,” adding, “We will continue to provide generous support through policies reflecting the opinions of youth and experts so that young people can grow into healthy members of society.”

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