Abstract
It has been 10 years since Long-tenn Care Insurance began, calling for "Kaigo no Shakai-ka" ,
that is shifting elderly care responsibilities from private to public sectors. In this report, I reviewed
the changes in the elderly care policy as well as in the actual cases of elderly care during this period
in Japan, and how these changes contributed to realize "Kaigo no Shakai-ka." First of all, I reviewed
issues relating to how home help services should be from the viewpoint of responsibility sharing
between families and social services for elderly care using various policy guidelines. As a result, it
was confinned that since the beginning of this system various restrictions were imposed on home
help services especially on utilization of housework services, and this tendency has been further
strengthened by revision of the law in 2005. Secondly, the above tendency was reconfinned by tracking
the trend after 200 I in statistical data. In particular, residential care for the elderly in recent years has
been remarkably demonstrating the tendency that can be expressed as "re-shifting of responsibilities
of elderly care to families." It is a classical issue in the case of housework services that responsibility
sharing between families and social services for elderly care is questioned in the situation itself where
a home helper provides services for daily living such as cooking and cleaning at a user's residence. It
is implied that some excessive restriction toward housework services represents a strong sense of crisis
by policymakers about regression of family responsibility in elderly care which could result in a "moral
hazard."
