Gohichi Ono, Satomi Tanaka

1. Overview of Kashiwa City

Kashiwa City is a core city in the northwestern part of Chiba Prefecture, located approximately 30 km (about 19 miles) from the center of Tokyo. It has a population of 429,865 (as of March 1st, 2022) and a total area of 114,74 square kilometers. As for railways, the Joban Line and Tsukuba Express radiate from the center of Tokyo, and the Tobu Urban Park Line runs north and south, making it an area where many people commute to the center of Tokyo.

As for the number of individuals with disabilities living in the city as of the end of March 2022, there are 19,188 certified individual disability card holders (physical, educational therapy, mental), and the number of disability welfare service recipients is 4,308 including adults and children.

As for trends in new applicants for disability welfare services, there is an increase in the number of applications for children’s daycare services due to the influx of young families, which is the regional characteristic of Kashiwa City.

2. Regarding the development of Community Life Support Bases in Kashiwa City

Kashiwa City's development of Community Life Support Bases has been included in the national government’s basic policy to formulate a three-year disability welfare plan starting in FY2015 (April 1,2015 to March 31, 2016). Based on this, we included the development of these bases as a priority policy in the three-year Normalization Kashiwa Plan (The Third Term Kashiwa City Basic Plan for Persons with Disabilities [Mid-Term Plan] and The Fourth Term Kashiwa City Disability Welfare Plan).

In Kashiwa City, as in the rest of Japan, the aging of the disabled, the increasing severity of their disabilities, and the passing of their parents have become issues for the community.  When we conducted interviews with various organizations including the parties and their families, we have received earnest voices that most of the consultation offices do not provide consultation services during nighttime and holidays and that there is no place that accepts emergency cases immediately after the consultation. Therefore, we have decided to develop one-stop Community Life Support Bases (multifunctional base development type)

that provides everything from consultation to emergency response.

Regarding the development of Community Life Support Bases, with a population scale of over 400,000 people in Kashiwa City, we believe that one location is necessary for every 100,000 people, and we have formulated a plan to develop four locations by 2020. First, we developed two Community Life Support Bases, Aoba and Tanpopo in 2017, and have continued to make it a priority policy in the Normalization Kashiwa Plan (The Third Term Kashiwa City Basic Plan (Late-Term Plan) and The Fifth Term Kashiwa City Disability Welfare Plan) since FY2018. We also have established one Community Life Support Base, Shonan in the same year, and another Community Life Support Base, Bloom in 2019, for a total of four locations as planned.

In the summer of 2017, we established the Kashiwa City Community Life Support Center Management Council, whose members consisted of representatives of the Community Life Support Bases, experts, the families of the affected people, and the government. We are working to ensure appropriate management by evaluating functions, examining cases where support is difficult, and sharing regional issues.

3. Contents and characteristics of Community Life Support Bases in Kashiwa City

Community life coordinators' are assigned to four community life support bases in Kashiwa City to provide (1) 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year emergency consultation support, (2) use of short-term admissions (emergencies, etc.), (3) group homes for living and hands-on experience, (4) local human resource development, and (5) creating a local system where we have tried to respond to disabilities such as physical, intellectual, mental, and developmental. In addition, we are developing activities that make use of our unique functions based on the local situation and our strengths in dealing with each disability based on our past business development.

The Community Life Support Base Aoba has unique functions such as dispatching caregivers for individuals with severe disabilities and daycare for elderly people with disabilities. We also specialize in supporting individuals with developmental disabilities.

The Community Life Support Base Tanpopo operates a visiting nurse station, a multifunctional office for the production and sale of authentic bread, and an afterschool daycare service for children with medical care. We also specialize in providing support for individuals with mental disabilities.

The Community Life Support Base Shonan has added a new 24-hour consultation function by combining consultation support offices, group homes, and short-term admissions, centering on support facilities for individuals with disabilities. In addition, support for individuals with intellectual disabilities is also a strength.

The Community Life Support Base Bloom has unique functions such as home-visit nursing with a clinic, living care and in-home care for individuals with severe disabilities, and a community space open to the public. It’s good at supporting individuals with severe disabilities and children who need medical care.

Kashiwa City is roughly divided into four districts, and the community life support base plays a central role in the area in which they are in charge. As we aim to build a Kashiwa network connecting welfare services for individuals with disabilities, medical institutions, educational institutions, etc., we hold training sessions at each Community Life Support Base for consultation support specialists at regional consultation support offices, regional comprehensive support centers, social workers at medical institutions, and other related organizations to discuss case studies, regional issues, and share information, etc. The program aims to further develop the network while strengthening regional cooperation with various organizations.

4. Current Challenges and Future Prospects

The role of the community life support base is to develop a system for everyone to lead a secure life in the community. We believe that it is our mission to become the core of the community and strengthen the network. To that end, it is important to organically interact and collaborate with various social resources on a daily basis. It is necessary for the public and private sectors to work together in order to identify local issues and take measures to address them through collaboration.

However, we cannot say that we have sufficiently grasped regional issues yet as we are still only partway there.

Under the Social Welfare Law revised by the Act on Partial Revision of the Social Welfare Law (Act No. 52 of 2022), etc. for the realization of a symbiotic communal society, the government established the Multi-Layered Support System Improvement Project, which will be enforced from April 1rst, 2021. It aims to build a comprehensive support system to meet the complicated and complex support needs of local residents by ①integrating consultation support, ②participation support, and ③community building support, regardless of the attributes of local residents at municipalities.

These three types of support include comprehensive consultation from the perspective of individual support, support from the entire support-related organization, and support to restore connections with society by staying close to the individual and household through participation support, as well as by creating an environment that ensures multi-generational interaction and diverse opportunities for activity in the community. This is to strengthen the safety net based on people-to-people relationships, both in terms of individual support and support for the community.

Kashiwa City will also start a multi-layered support system development project from FY2022. Since it is necessary to organically cooperate in fields such as disabilities, the elderly, children, and poverty, there is a demand for the work of local life support centers to play a central role in each region. In the future, it is hoped that efforts will be made to identify and resolve regional issues while promoting cross-sectoral collaboration in each region.