Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare boosts subsidies for local information sessions to recruit foreign nursing care workers amid a growing shortage.
As the shortage of nursing care workers becomes more serious, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has decided to strengthen local efforts to attract foreign nursing care workers, including by subsidizing the costs of private companies recruiting overseas to hold information sessions there. According to estimates by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, there will be approximately 2,154,000 care workers nationwide in fiscal 2022, and 2.72 million will be needed in fiscal 2040. However, if things continue as they are, there will be a shortage of 566,000 workers. In addition, in order to alleviate the labor shortage in the nursing care field, it was expected that more than 50,000 foreigners would be accepted into the country under the “specified skills” system for “nursing care” by fiscal 2023, but according to the Immigration Services Agency, as of August this year, the number of accepted people was only just over 39,000. For this reason, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has launched a program from fiscal 2023 to subsidize part of the expenses of private businesses conducting recruitment activities overseas in order to attract foreign nursing care workers. A supplementary budget of 270 million yen has been allocated for fiscal 2024 to projects that subsidize the costs of building relationships with local schools and other organizations, as well as recruitment and public relations activities such as holding information sessions locally, with a maximum of 500,000 yen per business. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare stated, “As competition for nursing care personnel around the world intensifies, it is necessary to strengthen our outreach overseas, and we would like to continue supporting operators who are making efforts in this area.” nhk news web December 22, 2024 5:31am.
Elder Abuse Prevention Law This is a Japanese law that states that putting a restraint belt on a dementia patient who is unstable when walking but is walking out of a bed or wheelchair without braking and is at risk of falling and breaking a bone, or confining a dementia patient who is loud at night to a locked soundproof room, is considered abuse. Speech lock This is a Japanese law that states that when a staff member notices a dementia patient doing something dangerous from a distance and instinctively shouts “Ah!” “Ah, it’s dangerous!” “Ah, no!” to stop them, it is considered abuse because it restricts the dementia patient’s behavior with words. Drug lock This is a Japanese law that states that trying to put a dementia patient who is unstable when walking at night, wandering around, loud, or violent to sleep with sleeping pills is considered abuse. Japan has to abide by this law while providing care.
Attentive listening to agitated users, listening to and explaining to people who are hard of hearing or have speech disorders, responding to sudden changes in the patient’s condition, requesting an ambulance, contacting family members, and handing over information to the hospital. I’m sure they would like to think that this is simple, low-paying work, but that’s not possible on the ground.
・If you don’t work while following the Elderly Abuse Prevention Act and speech lock and drug lock laws, you’ll be charged with “abuse.” ・You have to assist with bathing every day, which is extremely hard work. ・You have to assist with the toilet every time she cries “toilet” during the day, night, late at night, and early in the morning (it’s extremely hard work to get her to sit properly and deeply on the toilet seat). And elderly people have a lot of frequent urination), and after every meal, you have to get everyone out of bed and into a wheelchair, and then when they’re done, you have to put them back into bed, which is extremely hard work, multiple times a day.
– There’s the multitasking panic of having to do multiple tasks at the same time, such as multiple simultaneous calls for toilet assistance that ring without a break, and multiple simultaneous sensor mats that warn of the risk of falling, and so on, every day and every night. – It’s a job that requires constant fast-twitch muscle explosiveness, so it’s not suitable for elderly people, because if you don’t run to help, you’ll fall over and it’s dangerous.
・Human feces and urine stink. ・Watery stool and scabies are so bad. ・I have to go to the toilet assistance call at night between changing diapers for about 30 people. ・Because they control constipation with laxatives, the stool of the people in diapers is watery every day. ・It’s extremely difficult to change diapers without getting the watery stool on the pants or sheets. ・It takes a lot of time and effort to pre-wash the parts of the pants, pajamas, sheets, and towels with watery stool by hand before putting them in the washing machine. ・Many people can’t brush their teeth or gargle by themselves. I can’t bend my waist, so I have to pour gargle water right at the edge of the sink, splashing everyone around.
The urine of people with balloons is checked at regular times at night to see if it’s cloudy and how much it is, and then discarded. There’s a night shift once a week, which is bad for your health. The weighing of everyone is done twice a month, and they have to load their wheelchairs onto the machine, but they’re weighed beforehand without them being on it, and if there’s a change in the number of cushions or anything like that, it has to be recorded again, which is a pain.
Care workers are slaves because they are tricked into taking on the 5k2y treatment without telling anyone about it.
It’s just that in this internet society, treatment is visible and can be compared in advance by ordinary people, so it’s an unpopular job that people are intentionally avoiding. Right now, they’re trying to trick people from Southeast Asia into taking the job. NHK is still trying to gently recommend and trick people into taking on care work this year.
>>41 Nowadays, Vietnamese people are heading to Seoul, Busan, Taipei, Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Ho Chi Minh City rather than cheap, harsh, and cruel Japan, and Filipinos can already speak English, so they have no use for Japan unless wages are raised significantly. And above all, Japanese people are short-tempered at work, get extremely angry, are unreasonable, and look down on Southeast Asians (except for Singaporeans, Thais, and Malaysians, whose attitudes change depending on the country), so of course they’ll leave Japan. As soon as the yen weakens, they move away.
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