In Japan most homehelpers are full-time employees of local governments or local social welfare councils which are entrusted with the administration of this service by the local governments. In other industrialized countries, a substantial proportion of homehelp service is provided by part-time workers. However, due to the law on government employees and also due to pressure from the Union of the Local Government Employees, it is very difficult for local governments to hire part-time homehelpers. This is one of the reasons why our homehelp service has been inefficient and its development very slow. Thus, the National Government recently revised the regulations on the homehelp service system, so that local governments may purchase these services from for-profit agencies. Without the registration system of trained careworkers referred to above, it would be very difficult for the government to control the quality of service provided by for-profit agencies. I should think that the registration system of trained careworkers will also make a great contribution to the improvement of the quality of care services provided by public bodies and not-for-profit agencies in the community and in institutional settings.
(4) Recent Trends and the Present Situations
a) Ten-year Gold Plan for the Development of Health and Welfare Services for the Elderly
At the beginning of 1990, the "Ten-year Gold Plan for the Development of Health and Welfare Services for the Elderly" was promulgated by the National Government. According to this plan, the pace of the development of various public services for the elderly was to be greatly accelerated (Table 1, 2).
However, as the Gold Plan of 1990 was significantly revised in 1995, the details of the Plan will be given later in this paper when the author explains the New Ten-year Gold Plan.
The reason why the Plan was promulgated was that the existence of a gap between the pace of the aging of the Japanese society and that of the development of various social policies for the elderly had become quite clear. In order to cope with the predicted gap between the supply and demand, the National Government planned to introduce a new"consumption tax." To persuade the public of the necessity of the new tax, the National Government made a long-term plan to cope with the coming aging society and disclosed it along with the necessary huge amount of money which could only be raised with the new tax system.
