Japan Press Weekly

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2023 February 1 - 7 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

JCP Motomura calls for decreasing group size in nurseries to protect children’s safety

Japanese Communist Party lawmaker Motomura Nobuko on February 3 at a House of Representatives Budget Committee meeting urged the government to increase the national standard for care staff-to-child ratio at nurseries without delay in order to protect children’s lives and safety.

Motomura pointed out that the current ratio for children aged 1-2, under which one worker takes care of six children, was established 56 years ago. She went on to point out that regarding children aged 3-5, under the current standards which was adopted 75 years ago and is the worst among OECD member countries, one care worker needs to look after 30 children.

Welfare Minister Kato Katsunobu in response said that he understands that in Japan, the number of children assigned to one childcare worker is much larger than that in other countries.

Motomura referred to a questionnaire survey recently conducted by a civil group calling for increasing the number of childcare workers, and introduced the opinions of childcare workers in the survey such as: “Under the current standards, we are mentally and physically exhausted due to excessively long working hours and heavy workloads, which endangers children’s lives and safety.” Motomura stressed the need to urgently increase the number of professionally-trained childcare workers.

Motomura said that as Prime Minister Kishida claims that he will carry out “different dimension” child-support policies, the government should improve the current standards without delay.

The welfare minister gave no clear responses.

Past related article:
> JCP calls for improving national standards for the number of children's nurses [May 11, 2022]