News from Japan (June 27, 2007)

Serious shortage of personal assistants

In Japan, many IL centers are now facing serious shortage of personal assistants. Shortage of PAs becomes major threat to many PWDs’ who practicing independent living in community.

Shortage is attributed to the drastic cut-back of public financial support for PAs by Japanese national government two years ago in the name of revenue shortfall. Since then, despite of serious effort of IL centers to rationalize operation, IL centers have lost certain number of PAs and also have difficulty in recruiting new ones.

Currently, we continuously and widely offer job while negotiating with national government and municipalities to restore the cut of public financial support.