What does it take to be a child welfare center (A.K.A. Jidousoudanjo in Japanese) Social Worker in Japan?

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What is a Jidousoudanjo?

According to the (Japanese) Child Welfare Act [1] (児童福祉法[1]) the professional center for Child Welfare Institution.

Just by this answer we do not know the specific work and stuff that workers from this institution are doing.
So,
let’s find out down below!


According to the Japanese Law:

Each of the Japanese prefectures and cities designated by government ordinance (, the so called ‘big cities’ , and in order for a city to be called a ‘big city’ such as Tokyo, a city must have at least more than 1 million citizens according to the Japanese law enforcement) have at least 1 Jidousoudanjo.

Also, according to the Japanese Law [2], the recipients of the Jidousoudanjo’s service, (recipient=whom are the children of the ages below 0~17 years old) should receive the following support from the Jidousoudanjo.

  • The Jidousoudanjo must cater to the recipient’s problem relating to school and the recipient’s home/home place.
  • The Jidousoudanjo must investigate the problems pertaining to both the recipient himself and the recipient’s home/ home place environment, mental health, physical wellbeing and health, education, social environment with professional help/guidance.
  • According to the conclusion of the Jidousoudanjo’s investigation, the Jidousoudanjo must take adequate approach on the problem at hand.
  • In some circumstances the Jidousoudanjo has decided that the recipient should be taken under their care/protection, it must be done according to the (Japanese) law.

As written above the recipient’s problem can be said specified by the following:
  • Nursing consultation
    • -where the recipient does not have a complete parentage (the mother or the father are both non-existent or the other half is unavailable/absent
  • The recipient is total health consultation
  • The recipient is overall mental and physical health consultation
    -mental disabilities, physical disabilities, health disabilities.
  • The consultation of social misconduct
    -the recipient running away from home, sexual misconduct and unlawful behavior.
  • Developmental consultation
    -such as behavioral problems and school problems of the recipient.
A we can see from the recipient’s problem specification, the Jidousoudanjo social worker must have a professional degree on these subjects.
In some cases, there are social workers who do not have the professional background or/nor do not have the professional qualification/criteria to be a Jidousoudanjo social worker.

And that is the reality; there are many who are not qualified to be a Jidousoudanjo social worker.

According to both the Approved Specified Non-profit corporation of the association for the prevention of child abuse and neglect president Mr. Tsuzaki and Hanazono University professor Mr. Hashimoto’s books [3], there are many workers from the public government office that are working for the Jidousoudanjo who does not fill the criteria or professional qualification to be a Jidousoudanjo social worker.
For example, the workers from the civil engineering office are working for the Jidousoudanjo and some couple of years later they are working for other office of the government.

As we can clearly see from the example above, there are government workers who work for other offices like Jidousoudanjo in this case.
These workers only work for some short couple of years, then after that, they are off to work for the other office, which means there are plenty of Jidousoudanjo social workers who are of this background, and thus as they work for the Jidousoudanjo office for just a short couple of years, and from this we may come to the conclution that they may not be able to fully develop the specific skillsets for the job at Jidousoudanjo.
This is a real and serious problem and realistically speaking, this should not be a problem in the first place, but the Japanese government is working to establish a law that will solve this problem and the problem related to it.

In the future post, I will talk about the law relating to child abuse and the problem I have spoken about this topic, and explain in my word the changes that are visible to us.


Sending positive vibes,
This blog’s creator, Miki Yoshie🍤💙

References:
[1] The (Japanese) Child Welfare Act, Article 12（児童福祉法第１２条）
[2] The (Japanese) Child Welfare Act, Article 11-1-2（児童福祉法第１１条１項２号）
[3] 津崎哲郎、橋本和明『最前線レポート 児童虐待はいま-連携システムの構築に向けて』ミネルヴァ書房

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