Municipalities face shortage of staff for welfare assistance

Japan Press Weekly

Japan Press Service Co., Ltd. is the only news agency providing information of progressive, democratic movements in Japan

Municipalities face shortage of staff for welfare assistance

Poverty is increasing as more than 1.7 million people receive public welfare assistance. But municipal offices are suffering from a severe shortage of caseworkers who deal with residents applying for or receiving welfare benefits.

“There are increasing numbers of dismissed temporary workers, unemployed workers whose unemployment benefit periods have expired, and elderly people who can hardly shoulder their increasing burdens. While working overtime and on Saturdays and Sundays, we never have enough time to adequately counsel each applicant.”

This was said by a veteran woman caseworker who has been working over 30 years in Osaka Prefecture. “Although our job is to deal with residents’ harsh livelihoods, our excessive caseloads and working conditions prevent us from doing so,” she said.

In Osaka City, 3,108 people applied for welfare assistance in September. The number doubled from 1,604 applications submitted to the city in the same month of last year.

Each caseworker in the municipality is responsible for an average of 130 households receiving welfare benefits. Some of them who work for elderly residents have to deal with more than 350 such households. However, the social welfare law requires cities to have one caseworker per 80 households on welfare assistance.

The 2005 White Paper on Health, Labor, and Welfare pointed out that in a municipality where the ratio of caseworkers to the standard number of such workers set by the law is high, the ratio of the households on welfare assistance to all households is law, and vice versa. “This is because the municipality with more caseworkers can provide residents with more detailed assistance for their self-support,” said a welfare ministry official.

Even cases of suicide occur

Due to the severe staff shortage, an increasing number of caseworkers are suffering from mental health issues and have to take medical leave. Some of them have even committed suicide.

Under the state measures to restrain welfare payments and decrease municipal workers, the number of caseworkers that municipalities were legally obliged to have before has become since 2000 just a “target” without any legal obligation. Due to their difficult financial situations, municipal offices cannot hire the necessary number of workers, or can only add non-regular temporary workers.

Caseworkers have to deal with residents’ diseases and injuries as well as issues of employment and human relations. They have to have technical knowledge and experience in the general social insurance fields.

Workers hardly possess expertise

A worker said, “Increasingly, vacancies are filled with unqualified workers and social welfare staff are transferred to another job after a few years. Because there is no job training, workers can hardly possess the expertise needed to properly offer welfare assistance.”

Osaka Prefectural Association for Safeguarding People’s Life and Health (Daiseiren) secretary general Oguchi Kokichiro pointed out, “A lot of people are unfairly restrained from applying for welfare assistance. Because of the government’s livelihood protection assistance budget cut policy and lack of knowledge about the Livelihood Protection Law, welfare assistance staff can’t appropriately deal with the cases by using the law. One staff member actually forced a welfare benefit recipient to cancel a life insurance policy.”

In 2007, Osaka’s Kaizuka City government policies, including limitation on application for public housing, unfair reduction in welfare benefit payments, and unusual advice regarding family finance, provoked social criticism because such policies violate the rights of welfare benefit applicants and recipients.

The Osaka Federation of Prefectural and Municipal Workers’ Unions together with Daiseiren, lawyers, and researchers conducted a fact-finding study in Kaizuka City and issued a proposal demanding that the Kaizuka City government change its basic position on social welfare and improve workers’ working conditions and training. Due to the Kaizuka City Workers’ Union’s struggles, the city government agreed to increase the number of staff. Some welfare benefit recipients say, “Recently, something has changed in welfare assistance staff’s attitude. They have become kinder.”

The National Federation of Prefectural and Municipal Workers’ Unions (Jichiro-ren) in its proposal called on the government to turn the standards for staff placement back to “legal standards”, to pay personnel costs from the national budget, to offer full-time positions to non-regular public workers, and to increase the state contribution to the livelihood protection program from 75 to 80 percent without decreasing the minimum standard of living. The Jichiro-ren also urged the government to drastically revise the Worker Dispatch Law and to establish the pension system guaranteeing everyone minimum pension benefits so that people can live with dignity without the need to receive welfare benefits.

Jichiro-ren Secretary General Saruhashi Hitoshi stated, “Improving an office environment which qualified workers can work in free from anxiety is linked to protecting people’s lives and safety. Jichiro-ren will request the government to stop cutting the livelihood protection budget and to take its responsibility for providing welfare protection staff more opportunities to acquire professional knowledge.”

- Akahata, November 25, 2009