Japan Press Weekly

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2009 February 25 - March 3 [WELFARE]

Government panel plan will force parents to find child day care center by themselves

The Welfare Ministry panel on social security services on February 24 finalized its proposal to change the current child-care systems into one that requires parents to be responsible for finding a day care center for their children on their own.

The panel plans to discuss details of the proposed system so that the government can submit a bill to revise the Child Welfare Law to the Ordinary Session of the Diet in FY 2010 or FY 2011 in order to get a new system implemented from April 1, 2013.

The current Child Welfare Law requires municipalities to provide child-care services to their residents, and municipalities have the responsibility to find appropriate day-care centers for children when receiving applications from parents.

If the proposed system is implemented, parents will be required to look for day-care centers by themselves and directly make contract with them. Day care centers will be forced to do additional paperwork which municipal offices are currently doing.

As many mothers are looking for jobs amid the current economic recession, applications to local municipalities seeking public childcare services are rapidly increasing. In Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture, 40 percent of applicants are unable to have their children enrolled in authorized daycare centers.

The new system will possibly lower the minimum standards of authorized daycare centers and further encourage private firms to run day care centers in order to have more childcare facilities with lower qualities.

The need now is to drastically increase the childcare budget and build more public daycare facilities.