RESEARCH ON UTILIZATION OF NATIONAL EMPLOYMENT WELFARE SERVICE BY PERSONS WITH INTRACTABLE DISEASES IN JAPAN

With the revision of the Services and Supports for Persons with Disabilities Act in 2013 to provide welfare service to patients with Intractable Diseases (IDs) and the enactment of a new act for these patients in 2015, employment support (ES) service for them has become an important issue in Japan because of the chronicity of many of the diseases. The objective of this research is to examine utilization of the ES welfare services, and to identify care expected from ES service providers and their current efforts. A questionnaire was mailed to every registered provider in Japan (12,483 locations). Among 6,053 respondents, 16 percent reported patients with IDs using their services, and that among them, 74 percent had a certificate of person of disabilities, which is not required under the current Act. As for the reasons for reporting non-utilization, the percentage of “absence of inquiry” was 77 percent, while that of “needed medical care,” “insufficient staff/facilities” and “lack of appropriate work” were all less than 3 percent. The result shows that dissemination of the ES service is still insufficient, and patients with IDs, their families, support providers and medical professionals need to be familiarized with the service in details.