Daisuke Sakai
Chairman of National Employment Transition Support Office Liaison Council

The subcommittee on Individuals with Disabilities for the Social Security Council has recently compiled a report on the revision of the Comprehensive Support for Persons with Disabilities Act. In this article, I will describe my views on the key points of this report’s review of the employment support sector, as well as my perspectives and challenges in establishing and reviewing the system in the future.

In the area of employment support, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare held a study group on strengthening cooperation between employment and welfare measures for individuals with disabilities (held seven times from November 6, 2020, to June 4, 2021). This was held prior to the revision of the comprehensive support plan. The committee discussed how current issues and future directions should be reflected in welfare services for individuals with disabilities.The report of the Subcommittee for Persons with Disabilities is based on this study group.

The points to be discussed were as follows: (1) strengthening employment assessment, (2) how employment-related welfare services for individuals with disabilities should be used during employment, (3) how human resources should be trained to support these individuals in employment, and the employment support system in the community, etc.

The strengthening of employment assessment is to establish a new employment selection support (provisional name), which will enable individuals to learn about their objective employment abilities through workplaces and case conferences before using employment-related welfare services (Employment transition support/Employment continuation support type A/B), and to use this information to select services afterward. We feel that there is a great need for this system because there are many examples of people who have the ability to work in companies but are stuck in employment-related services. On the other hand, in order to institutionalize this project, it is necessary to have a somewhat unified view and perspective on assessment results nationwide, and the training of human resources to conduct such assessments is an issue. It is no exaggeration to say that the success or failure of this project depends on human resource development.

The second point is related to the image of the users. Employment-related services were positioned to provide services to those who had difficulty finding employment at companies, etc., so they were not expected to be used by those who were already employed (except for employment continuation support). In this proposal, the direction is to legally allow the temporary use of employment-related welfare services for individuals with disabilities when they increase their working hours in stages from short-time employment after starting work at a company or when they aim to return to work after a leave of absence. Some local governments have already made a flexible decision to provide these benefits to those who are eligible, and we believe that this is a realistic response in terms of correcting regional disparities. However, it is indicated that the period of use of employment-related welfare services during employment is about 3 to 6 months, and there are concerns that this will limit the need for use. In addition, the handling of use during employment was largely at the discretion of the local government, but if it is organized by the system, there is a possibility that those who are currently able to use the system will be restricted from doing so.

Regarding the final human resource development, we plan to make major changes to the training system in light of the issues such as the expansion of the target group, including those with developmental disabilities, and the deterioration of the quality of support due to the increase in the number of businesses. From the viewpoint of the cross-section of employment and welfare, we think it is significant that the various personnel in charge of employment-related businesses are positioned as mandatory participants in the basic training course. I would also like to look forward to the strengthening of the employment support network in the region and the development and expansion of employment settlement support.

Since this review was intended to discuss disability welfare in general, the time available for deliberation in each area was very limited. Therefore, it is hard to say that we have sufficiently discussed the employment support system itself and the future of Employment continuation support type A, and we feel that there are issues that remain unsolved. We sincerely hope that these issues will be taken up in the next review discussion and remuneration revision.