According to the National Police Agency, Yudai Funato (father, 33) and Yuri Funato (mother, 25) arrested on suspicion of abandonment by a person responsible for protection as they caused the death of their 5-year-old daughter named “Yua” by an infection caused by malnutrition on 2nd, March in 2018. They left their daughter without giving sufficient foods although they knew her daughter suffered from malnutrition from the end of January in 2018.
A notebook with a full of apology and reflection to her parents written by Yua was found. Here is an excerpt from the original “I promise I will do much better tomorrow than today and I will make every effort to be able to do what mom said so please, please forgive me, please….”
This incident that parents caused the death of their daughter by starvation can be one indicator of how serious child abuse is in Japan. As long as I know, there are at least 3 news reports of fatal accidents by child abuse last year. The National Policy Agency reported on 14th, March in 2019 that the total number of fatal accidents by child abuse was 36, the number of detected abuse incidents is 1,380 and the number of children suffering abuse is 1,394 and the number of protected children having high urgency was 4,571 in 2018.
The number of children aged younger than 18 years old whose parents were reported on suspicion of child abuse to a child consultation center was 80,252. The seriousness of child abuse has increased year by year. Crucial incidents that parents arrested on suspicious of murder through child abuse have happened one after another and the government urged to establish a reform bill for the related laws to eradicate this brutality and fatality.
Referred fromMinistry of Health, Labour and Welfare
There are some Japanese words in some places of a graph chart right above so you may not understand what this graph expresses. This is a transitive graph of the number of child abuse reports per year, which is frequently quoted as a ground of reinforcement of child consultation centers. The vertical axis is for the number of abuse reports and the horizontal axis is for the year. According to this graph, the number of child abuse reports has increased by double for 5 years from 2012 to 2017
The number of child abuse reports are published by the ministry of health, Labour and Welfare on a large scale but it is still increasing as if nobody takes child abuse situation seriously.
Taking these results, mass communications take the tone of an argument that it is obvious for the government to strength specialty and increase of child consultation center which is in charge of child abuse. However, increasing care staff and strengthening staff’s training was actually executed repeatedly right after enforcement of the Act on the Prevention, etc, of Child Abuse. As a result, has child abuse been deterred?
A word of “child abuse” is as ambiguous as there are still divisions of opinion among the people in Japan between child abuse and child training in terms of to what extent of behavior to children should be made an issue of a child abuse case.
However, it is obvious that “child abuse death case” is the most serious one for the government to solve as the top-priority issue. Child abuse death case is the happening of domestic murder or manslaughter of a child by the parents. The majority number of homicide incidents in Japan has happened among family or relatives. In that sense, child abuse is the same kind as other homicide incidents, and it needs to be considered from the framework of general fatal crimes without dividing between homicide and child abuse separately when reviewing the policy.
I want to find out what kind of problems are actually hidden behind the Japanese child abuse protection system that hasn’t been able to stem the tide against an increasing number of child abuse as compared to another country’s system.
Contents
- 1 Problems of the Japanese child abuse protection system
- 2 Manpower of child consultation center and no child abuse specialized section
- 3 The standard of temporary protection
- 4 Weak cooperation between police and child consultation center
- 5 Uncommon foster parent system
- 6 American prompt and systematic intervention to child abuse
Problems of the Japanese child abuse protection system
There are quite a few problems I can come up with without limitation but I want to approach the problems from defectiveness of child abuse protection system managed as one of administrative service in terms of how swiftly the authority can handle child abuse how it can reduce the death of children by their parents. I will not touch the problems of domestic child training in the individual household in terms of whether the Japanese way of child education and training is really suitable for every single child or not this time.
The following factors are what I thought to be essentials which are the part of things hidden behind the problems that nobody couldn’t protect children from violence by the government approach. These factors are what I found instantly from newspapers and internet mediums.
- Manpower of child consultation center and no child abuse specialized section
- The standard of temporary protection
- Weak cooperation between police and child consultation center
- Uncommon foster parent system
Let’s see one by one with other country’s case
Manpower of child consultation center and no child abuse specialized section
| USA | Japan | |
|---|---|---|
| The number of child abuse reports | 2,100,000 (2014) | 88,931 (2014) |
| City | Losangels | Yokohama |
| Population | 8,700,000 | 3,700,000 |
| The number of Child Protective Services | 17 | 4 |
| The number of social workers | 3,500 (6000 including other staffs) | Social workers: 81 Psychotherapist: 29, other staffs: 373 Total: 483 |
| Night reception | Assign full time social workers on night shift | Assign temporary social workers on night shift |
Referred from Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare
It may be biased to compare simply the scale of the child abuse protection system of both countries by numerical data without considering the cruciality and scale of the problems. The number of child abuse incidents in the USA is 23 times more than that in Japan. The situation of child abuse in the USA gets worse and worse so that the attitude towards child abuse is inevitably quite systematic and a route to a certain solution is simply well-organized under strong enforcement of the child protection law.
The number of Social workers is overwhelmingly small
| Los Angels | Yokohama | |
|---|---|---|
| Children population (under 18) | 2347892 (2014) | 723772 (2014) |
| The ratio of social workers occupied in children population in the city | 0.3% | 0.07% |
According to the example, the ratio of social workers occupied in children population in Yokohama is extraordinary small as you could see its percentage and the number of social workers is only 20 percent of total workers enagaged in a child consultation center. It is impossible to deal with entire reports of child abuse that asks for help.
Child consultation centers all over Japan are managed by each municipality or city designated by ordinance. Child consultation centers are not specialized only in child abuse case but it also handles entire children problems such as injuring, crimes, school refusal. For that reason, too many tasks and lack of social workers have been indicated since before child abuse came to the surface outstandingly in Japan.
There are roughly divided sections or teams in charge of child abuse in each child consultation center, however, tons of inquiries a day need to be handled by only a couple of hundred people. If one social worker is pressed to tackle with multiple cases, other staffs even without qualification in other sections need to undertake a child abuse case that originally needs to be taken charge of by the social worker. So the section or the team specialized in child abuse is just as good as having nothing.
Occasionally, a staff releases temporary protection for child abuse and let a child go home by wrong judgment. After all, parents killed a child not long after going back home.
Social workers in child consultation center in Japan are just a group of amateurs without knowledge of how to handle child abuse situation
There is a position named “Child Welfare Officer” in Japan. This is, what we call, a social worker in Japan. As “officer” is put at the end of the title, this title indicates not a specific qualification but just a job title of public officials assigned to a child consultation center.
73% of employees in a child consultation center is employed as a social worker and other employees are employed as a general administrative officer. The rest of 27 percent of employees are nominal “Child Welfare Officer”, who is simply assigned to child consultation center after being hired by a municipality although they don’t have a specific qualification or a degree of a certain field related to child welfare. Some child consultation centers have no social workers. Even the percentage of chiefs of the centers is only 47%.
After being assigned to a child consultation center, new faces take charge of serious cases such as child abuse without sufficient training in advance. Child welfare officers are intimidated to handle child abuse case by unreasonable indignation from parents and how they manage and control the situation without knowledge of child abuse.
There are many cases that child welfare officers didn’t protect children because they felt intimidated by mad children’s parents and because they judged by own subjective standards which are referred to their experience in childhood like “such a case is smilier to what I experienced when I was a little boy and it is not within the range of child abuse.”
There are also many cases that a child consultation center aborts protection from a child with trivial reasons such as “ because there is no wound or cut on child’s body”, “because parents apologize and reflect on what they did to a child ”. Officers visit a child’s family and give a piece of simple advice about child rearing to parents who have the possibility to behave child abuse on diary basis and come straight back to an office without investigating details about what actually happens in a house. After all, child consultation centers show their true stance from such corner-cutting handlings that “not causing the death of children is better than recognizing child abuse”.
Lack of building ability and insufficient training system for child welfare officers are not only the problem that brings about corner-cutting handlings for child abuse.
I want to ask why you became a child welfare officer without even having the courage to quarrel with child’s parents to protect a child who may suffer abuse from parents. However, it is actually the truth that child welfare officers are caught in a dilemma.
Whereas they have a power of compulsory execution to separate a child from parents, they are to be said to make a good relationship at the same time with child’s parents by an upper class of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and consider the possibility that anonymous reports contain falsity by revenge or harassment or by simple misunderstanding. Temporary protection has the same force as the power of arrest. Mistaken child protection connects to not only trust problem but a collapse of the family. Actually, there are a lot of families who fight on a court with a municipality to get a child back from the orphanage, who was caught by a child welfare officer in the name of protection. Child abuse is quite a sensitive problem to be handled.
Therefore, professional social workers are needed even more for saving children and also healthy organizational management.
Japan has little understanding of child abuse cruciality although fatal incidents have repeatedly caused so far. Setting no child abuse section and assigning no specialist for child abuse is out of question prior to managing child protection centers.
The standard of temporary protection
Temporary protection can be executed with a child consultation center’s judgment but the term of child protection is legally 2 months. If forcing long term child-parent separation measure, it needs to adopt a measure to take a child into an orphanage.
However, in this case, a child consultation center needs to principally secure agreement of a person in parental authority on sending a child to an orphanage. If failing to secure agreement from parents, the chief of a child consultation center files a lawsuit to a family court. But it is rare for a child consultation center to take a case to a family court.
Generally, it makes parents write an oath to declare “we are free from child abuse” by letting legal measure such as loss of parental power be seen for a moment two months after protecting a child if parents show a sign of remorse.
However, it doesn’t work well because as if often the case with abusing parents, writing oath of no more child abuse is the trigger for escalating their violence to their children that sometimes causes the death. Child welfare officers are really sensitive about proposing a measure to parents when releasing protection. This measure is not really useful to child abuse protection but help escalate child abuse.
Even if being entrusted to foster parents or entering an orphanage is decisive matter as of notification of temporary protection, child welfare officers need to support home rehabilitation to recover parent-child relationship. It is not an easy story that things are done by simply providing legal punishment to abusing parents. Protecting the child from parents and being entrusted to foster parents are at least a temporary measure prior to returning children to parents after cooling off. This is the stance of the Japanese child consultation center.
Weak cooperation between police and child consultation center
Child consultation centers have strong concerns that parents who ill-treat their child, and a nursery school and an elementary school that know a child who suffers abuse have second thoughts about reporting child’s circumstance proactively if they realize it cooperatively shares information with a police department because of parents’ worries about being arrested on suspicion of abusing and school’s worries if involving police may escalate trusted problem of school.
Child abuse is a very sensitive problem and complicated to judge whether or not, what parents did to a child can be recognized as child abuse so proactive down-to-earth hearing and visiting investigation to know the accurate child’s circumstance are a very important activity for child consultation centers, needless to say. They fear the most that the concerned people build an emotional wall by realizing the intervention by police, which may ruin the trusted relationship between the concerned people and child consultation centers.
Preventing death by abuse is certainly the top priority to tackle with but assembling for prosecution and child-parent separation by hasty intervention infringe on child’s right to live with parents. Child consultation centers are also worried if entire information sharing between child consultation centers and police may lose the balance between compulsory intervention and humane support.
The government applied a rule to do cooperative information sharing between police and child consultation centers for the measure of family rehabilitation after letting a child back home from protection but it didn’t step in to make it rule to do information sharing for entire cases after all.
Uncommon foster parent system
More than 80 percent of children who need social care are brought up in orphanages in Japan. Japan’s social care for orphans has been criticized as the supremacy of orphanage by other countries. In comparison with the major western countries,
The ratio of children separated from parents who enter orphanages tends to be high and the ratio of entrusting children to foster parents is extremely lower than other advanced countries.
However, advanced countries’ foster parents’ system can’t be necessarily defined as a success model. Every country has unique problems of orphans’ care. It is rather realistic for Japan to learn lessons from western countries’ past missions of foster parents system.
There is a historical factor that can’t perfectly declare that foster parents’ system is for the best environment to bring up children in the background of proactive promotion of foster parents system by western countries.
In the first place, western countries had also brought up orphans in children’s home before foster parents system was socially accepted generalized. However, child abuse in orphanages was problematized and movement to let orphans out of orphanages and leave them in foster parents’ care started in the 1970s.
There was also child abuse in foster parents’ house but because many of orphanages were demolished, orphans were shifted from one foster parents’ house to another as often as problems beyond foster parents’ control happened.
Qualitative and quantitative improvement of foster parents’ system is of course needed but if let-orphans-out-of-orphanage policy is more prioritized than enhancing foster parents system by investing necessary people and money, orphans’ options are decreased after all. after the movement of let-orphans-out-of-orphanage in the 1980s, people fed distrust to foster parents’ system in the western countries. But in the 1990s, each municipality invested to private organizations and an effort to provide high-quality foster home realized in collaboration between municipalities and private organizations.
In short, if Japan takes the government-led foster parents’ system promotion, it ends up making the same mistake as the western countries’. The most important thing is to increase private organizations specializing in social welfare, which are trusted by the government.
American prompt and systematic intervention to child abuse
In the US, child abuse intervention starts with abuse reports. Schools and medical institutions report child abuse proactively to CPS (child protective services) through a hotline. Those reports are directly connected to an emergency team prior to a document report. Then, a meeting starts to judge if the reported case corresponds to child abuse. If neglecting to report in spite of witnessing an abusing scene, penalty including disqualification can be executed to the people engaged in education, medical and social welfare by the law.
Intake workers of an emergency team put headphones on their heads and are pressed to take care of ringing calls as if it were a call center staffs.
One of the tasks of an emergency team is an emergency intervention which is the screening of the necessity of securing the child or separating the child from parents. Seeing information about the history of intervention and the past abuse reports projected into a screen of a computer connected to a large capacity server, a case judged that intervention is needed is reported to an emergency intervention team and a concrete intervention measure is carried out.
In case that CPS separates a child from parents by emergency intervention, a child is left in foster parents’ care within at least 2 days. A child will not spend days in a temporary protection facility over a week.
Court sessions are held after 3 to 6 weeks from the first intervention. Appropriateness of CPS’s intervention such as child-parent separation is judged in a court. In case that CPS’s intervention is judged as an appropriate decision, a judge hands down the conditions to parents to take back a child
For example, if parents have problems with alcohol, a judge hands down a proposal of alcohol dependence rehabilitation. If parents have problems with general livings, a judge hands down the conditions to rebuild their livings through public assistance or a job support service. If parents have problems with their emotion’s control, a judge hands down a proposal of emotional rehabilitation through anger management training by psychiatry.
An assessment team of CPS creates these conditions and submit them to judges. It is an important point that the conditions created by an assessment team are handed down by a judge.
Japanese administrative agencies execute not only enforcement of a policy based on law but an interpretation of the law. Japan stubbornly sticks to the supremacy of administration.
For general citizens, justice is only a lifeline when their rights are infringed but justice is far apart from their reality in their everyday lives. However, it is very important for justice to inspect various cases of incidents in citizen’s diary life to reinforce checking function to administration. But in Japan, child consultation operations which seem to be not sufficiently protected by the law have harmful effects on the child abuse protection system.
I think the judgment of justice must be needed to clarify how legally the intervention by the administration is accepted and whether the case is required to be intervened by a child consultation center or not under the circumstance of uncertain child abuse scene.
Separation of three powers is a structure of society that the administration provides services in accordance with the law enacted by the legislation and the justice monitors whether the executed services are legally reasonable. Three big powers support or fight mutually constantly.
Abuse intervention scene should move more smoothly if the conflicts between parents and child consultation centers are absorbed into the power balance of the big three powers successfully.