A STUDY OF FACTORS AFFECTING CARE WORKERS’ PERCEPTIONS TOWARD NEW POLICIES FOR FOREIGN CARE WORKERS

摘要

It is officially estimated that about 377,000 care workers will be needed by 2025 in Japan. The Japanese government is discussing this need, including the possibility of broadening immigration status to encompass foreign care workers. Options include both developing a new immigration status, “LTC(Kaigo)” and adding a new LTC area to an existing immigration status, “technical-intern-training(Ginou-Jissyu).” This study explores care workers’ perceptions of these options and factors related to differences in their perceptions. Data were obtained from a nationwide survey of LTC institutions for the elderly in 2014. Structured questionnaires were sent to randomly selected 3,932 institutions. A total of 586 responses were obtained. Preliminary analyses revealed that 42.5% of care workers indicated that they supported the idea of a new immigration status, “Kaigo,” and 55.5% said the same about adding LTC areas to already existing status, “Ginou-Jissyu.” The most cited reason(77.4%) for agreeing to add LTC areas to “Ginou-Jissyu” immigration status was “to secure care workers because it will be inevitable to run out of them,” and 64.6% of the care workers who disagreed with adding the area chose the reason, “there remains concerns, including declining salaries of and increasing turnover rates of care workers.” There were statistically significant relationships between perceptions of care workers who agreed accepting foreign LTC workers and that of those who agreed broadening immigration status. It is suggested that the government and directors of LTC institutions pay attention to care workers’ perceptions in order not to accelerate already higher turnover rates of care workers.