Tsugaruno Firm
SOCIAL FIRM (TSUGARUNO), JAPAN.
2-10-3,fujino,hirosaki,aomori,japanfax +81-172-38-2026
PRESENT STATE OF VOCATIONAL LIHABILITATION
IN JAPAN AND OUR OWN FUTURE PLAN.
(Announcement in CEFEC CONFERENCE in SPA, BELGIUM)
I am very happy to be here and have the opportunity to speak in the internationally excellent conference like this. First of all, I want to tell you a little bit about the things occured recently in Japan. For these two years, three prime ministers resigned, because of their scandalls and politicalconfusion.
The biggest problem happened there is political conver t into the conservatism done by most of parties. They insist that opposition has lost its meaning because of the end of the cold war. But I think the end of the cold war never means the settlement of the many conflicts in the country. Anyhow in its result the C.overnment changed for the worse than before, for example, they are going to raise the consumption tax, reduce the pension for senior people, cut community health centers by half and take off the expense for hospital meals out of the medical insurance.
Next, I would like to talk about some changes in the fields of the psychiatric care and the vocational rehabilitation for people with mental problems. The psychiatric beds of Japan, the largest in the world, are getting smaller very
slowly. The Ministry of Health is distibuting more of its budget to the activities relevant to the rehabilitation than before, for example, day care, night care,occupational therapy, social skills training and so on. But the community care systems are very behind and poor without enough money especially in the fields of work anct accommodation. Then I think, so called " old long stayers " can have very few opportunities to live outside hospitals, because there are not much accommodation for them to live in with various kinds of care. On the one hand,community workshops providing the opportunities to work for people with mental problems are increasing day after day, but the size of each workshop is usually small, so there can be only eight thousand to ten thousand people working there.
Generally speaking, seventy percent of people with severely mental illness are unemployed in 3apan. On the another hand the 3APANESE ASSOCIATION OF COMMUNITY WORKSHOPS has held the international symposium this year and decided to keep contact with groups working for people with disability in Asia and do the campaign to set up the workshops in Thailand collaborating with other groups in Japan. That Association is trying to widen the international relationships among the INTERNATIONAL REHABILITATION FAMILY.
Finally, I would like to tell you about our history and present state and future. Our facilities are located in the northern part of Japan. Our first small workshop had been set up by families 10 years ago in the small room to let and started from doing easy work. The income obtained by that work was so small that we had to give the payment to users by the donated money from people outside those days. A,fter 2 years we could get the money from the Government, but that small subside was not enough to run. So we decided to set up more big facilities using the new provision of the Government to develop the opportunities to work, and started campaigns in the corrimuni t.y. As the result, over two hundred thousand dollars was donated by over four hundred citizens and four hundred thousand dollars was subsided officially, then we could set up a f;rctory to produce paper boxes as subcontracted work. When we started to run this factory four years ago, we didn' t have much work from the only company, so just one dollar per hour was paid to the users. Last year we tried to improve the style of product and efficiency of work, then we can have the subcontract work from five companies and pay the half of minimum wage toc1ay. Now we;ire planning to build an another bigger factory with more subsided money and then pay the minimum wage to the users. Besides what I mentioned above, we have one accommodation for five persons, one workshop for fifteen persons and one specially opened workshop for six persons in the ordinary company, and collaborating with two shops selling recycled goods given free by citizens. Our dream is to build the large complex of the sheltered factories and the ordinary company which collaborate with us on the process of product. If we collaborate each other, we believe that both of the sheltered factories and the ordinary company related can develop and survive together even under the economical depression which will be supposed to be long.
We feel very happy that we have learned much from CEFEC so far. We are hoping to keep contact with you in future. Thank you very much.October 6th, 1990.
CEFEC CONFERENCE in SPA, BELGIUM.
Worker training meeting experience announcement
Tsugaruno Firm.