The new direction of the social foster care system in Japan

Social foster care services in Japan were primarily provided through Residential Care Institutions for Children (RCIC). To improve the foster parent placement rate, the Japanese government is now reorganising measures to arrange for foster parents to be central to service provision. The turning point for social care in Japan was a 2011 government report Challenges and the Future Vision of Social Foster Care. It aims to build societies in which approximately one-third of children under state care are placed with foster parents or in family homes. Another one-third would be placed in group homes and the remaining third are to be placed in RCIC. The direction of promoting foster parent placement has accelerated since the 2017 report, The New Future Vision of Social Foster Care, which set specific goals to stop the placement of children in RCIC and increase foster parent placement. This short article outlines the reorganisation of the Japanese social foster care system and explains the factors influencing the changes.