Abstract
It is widely known that the placement rate of foster care in Japan has been consistently low. But recently, this trend has begun to change : the placement rate has been increasing since 2000. What has happened to cause this change? This paper aims to examine two hypotheses about what has caused the change. One is that "it results from an increase in child abuse and neglect", and another is that "it results from the reduction of the Child Protection Service staff's work overload by increasing staff". These hypotheses represent the direct and indirect effect of increasing child abuse and neglect in explaining the change of foster care placement rate. The analyses of these two hypotheses were conducted using macro level panel-data from every prefecture (Todoufuken) from 2000 to 2009. The analyses showed that : 1) the increase in child abuse is strongly related to the increase of foster care placement rate ; and 2) reduction of the Child Protection Service staffs role overload is more significantly related to the increase of foster care placement rate than to the increase of child abuse and neglect. The increase in the number of Child Protection Service staff itself was one governmental response to the increase of child abuse and neglect. However, it has had the unintended result of increasing the foster care placement rate.
