American volunteer Avery Briggs teaches a child English in the Guang'ai School in Beijing last November. The school, founded in 2004, provides free education and accommodation to homeless, disabled and poor children. The country has about 1 million homeless children, latest available figures from the Ministry of Civil Affairs show.

Authorities' efforts to beef up housing facilities for homeless children in the country's major cities to keep them from crime are seeing results but more is needed, a Ministry of Civil Affairs official told China Daily yesterday.

"We've seen a remarkable decrease in the number of homeless children involved in crime on streets in recent years," said Yang Anzhi, a ministry official in charge of helping homeless children.

The country has about 1 million homeless children, latest available figures from the Ministry of Civil Affairs showed.

More than 70 percent of such children came from rural areas and had left their homes because of poverty or underdeveloped social security systems, official figures revealed.

And the influx of these children to urban areas has made ongoing efforts to improve facilities for housing them more urgent, Yang said.

At present, the country's hostels for such children are mostly attached to general homeless shelters.