YOKOYAMA Junichi

In April 2023, the Institute of Social Work Education for Children and Families (Institute of SWE for Children and Families) was established as an institution attached to the Faculty of Social Welfare at Yamaguchi Prefectural University,which has been providing social worker training education since 1994 and has produced many social welfare personnel in and outside Yamaguchi Prefecture. With the basic principle of ‘For the realization of happiness of children and families in Yamaguchi Prefecture’, the aim of the Institute of SWE for Children and Families is to improve the expertise of childcare, welfare, education and other personnel involved in child and family support and to explore ways to support children and families with difficulties. This paper reported on the practice of the Institute of SWE for Children and Families, an educational and research institute established at the university, in its first year of operation, taking into account the circumstances that led to its establishment. It also discussed the development of projects for the following year and beyond.

The purpose of this study was to clarify the operation of (1) counseling and support systems and (2) training systems related to the care of “ Concerned Children “ based on the results of a questionnaire survey of childcare facilities (“day care centers,” “kindergartens,” and “centers for early childhood education and care”) in Prefecture A. The results of the study revealed the following. Regarding (1) counseling support system, 96% of the facilities provided “counseling opportunities,” and another 69.5% provided consultation opportunities with outside experts. On the other hand, the counseling system in terms of tools and equipment, such as the use of SNS/ applications and the establishment of counseling rooms, had not yet been fully developed. In terms of the training system, more than 90% of the childcare facilities provided both inside of facility and outside of facility training, and the rate of training outside of the facility was higher than that inside of the facility. In particular, 66.3% of the inside facility training sessions were conducted in facility conferences. All of these results were significantly different when tested by a binary test.