Start of Government Support for Personal Assistance Service

News from South Korea

Start of Government Support for Personal Assistance Service

From coming April, South Korean government will start public support for personal assistance service. Any severely disabled persons from 18 to 64 years old can receive support regardless of their income. Disabled persons under 18 years old also can receive support compatible for adult in the regard of their necessity of education, nourishment and protection.

Standard of public support for personal assistance service will be 40 hours per month. Hours, however, can be increased to maximum 180 per month in consideration of living conditions of users. Approval committee of local municipality will determine amount of support hours.

Receivers of livelihood protection and people with 200% lower income will pay 10% of service fee (maximum 20,000won). People with 120% lower income will pay 20% of service fee (maximum 40,000won).

Disability Movement Won a Moderate Improvement of Support Act for Independence of Disabled Persons in Japan

News from Japan

Disability Movement Won a Moderate Improvement of Support Act for Independence of Disabled Persons in Japan

PWDs in Japan launched 15,000 person demonstration around the Diet on October 31, 2006 to protest so-called Support Act for Independence of Disabled Persons in Japan. Mass media also widely reported problems of this act. Some representatives of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) – a ruling party in the Diet – were afraid of this issue being a disadvantage of coming Upper House election in this summer and, hence, demanded both Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) and Ministry of Finance to reduce self-pay ratio to have services in the Act. We also lobbied to influential representatives of LDP. As a result, we won agreement with MHLW on December 30 to reduce self-pay ratio in service use from 10% to 2.5%.

We also won to rise the basis of minimum annual income for service payment waiver from \1 million to \6 million so that most of PWDs in Japan will have waiver. Under 10% self-pay ratio, PWD staff of Human Care Association have to pay \37,200 every month. After modification, our payment will be reduced to one-fourth – \9,300 per month. This modification is significantly reduce our burden because our average monthly income is \160,000.

Our remaining problem was 20% decrease of income for necessary expenses for IL center management. To this problem, our movement brought result in limiting the shrink to 10%. Repetition of reduction of public payment for personal assistance services, however, has put management of IL center into harsh conditions. Hence, we IL centers will support each other and continue our negotiation with city and prefecture governments in order not to stop services.

JIL