In 2017, to address the shortage of long-term care workers, the Japanese government drastically changed policies for permitting foreigners to fill these jobs. This included creating a new immigration status, “Kaigo”(long-term-care) and adding a new job category to “Ginou-Jissyu”(technical-intern-training) immigration status. This study examined differences in views of hiring foreign care workers and these policy options between administrators and Japanese care workers at long-term-care institutions for older adults before these policy changes were in place as a way of understanding receptivity towards them. A nationwide survey was conducted during September to October of 2014. Structured questionnaires were sent to 3,932 randomly selected institutions, and a total of 722 responses were obtained from administrators(response rate:18.4%) and 586 responses(14.9%) from Japanese care workers. Preliminary analyses revealed that there were statistically significant differences between administrators and care workers in views of hiring foreign care workers(p<.001), language proficiency needs(p<.001) and ability to provide quality care(p<.05), and the three policy options proposed at the time(p<.01). For example, administrators agreed more with hiring foreign care workers and were less concerned with Japanese language skills than care workers. Moreover, administrators agreed more with creating a new immigration status and adding a new job category to “Ginou-Jissyu” immigration status than care workers. Given the recent policy enactment, it is suggested that administrators need to be aware of these differences in order not to accelerate already higher turnover rates of Japanese care workers and to pay attention to if and how the new policies are changing care workers views.
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