In Japan Interests Of Parents More Important Than Child's Rights

Almost 90% of children taken from their families in Japan end up in institutions rather than foster care, a rights group says, expressing shock at the rate—the highest among developed nations.

Just 12% of children who have been removed from their natural parents are placed with foster families, leaving tens of thousands of other youngsters to languish in understaffed children’s homes, Human Rights Watch said.

That figure is the lowest in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a club of rich nations, and is just a fraction of that in Australia, where 93.5% of these children live in a family home.

“It’s heartbreaking to see children crammed into institutions and deprived of the chance for life in a caring family setting,” said Kanae Doi, Japan director at Human Rights Watch.

“While other developed countries place most vulnerable children in family-based care, in Japan, a shocking 90% end up in institutions.”

In neighboring South Korea, 43.6% of children are in foster care. In the United States, it is 77%, while in Britain it is 71.7%.

The 119-page report says 39,000 children in Japan have been removed from their families by the authorities, who determined their parents were either unable or unwilling to look after them.

The report, carried out over a three-year period, found Japan’s child guidance centers—the local administrative bodies charged with dealing with children in care—are “predisposed to institutionalising children rather than placing them in adoption or foster care”.

“These centers often defer to the preference of biological parents to place the child in an institution rather than with a foster family, or seek to avoid time-consuming and often sensitive individual adoption or foster care arrangements.”

“In Japan, the interests of the parents is seen as more important than the interests of the child,” the report quoted one care worker as saying.

Existing childcare institutions—while non-profit organizations—also have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo as their funding is determined by the number of children that live with them.

“Japan’s childcare policymakers are allowing bureaucratic priorities to get in the way of finding alternative care that is in the child’s best interest,” Doi said.

“While many people working in the system are committed to helping children, a sustainable solution should recognize that foster care and adoption need to play a much more central role.”

© 2014 AFP