The purpose of this study is to find out how a public assistance scheme sets the condition for the children of welfare recipients who wish to continue their education to high schools and other institutions of higher education. This study analyzes the operational guidelines for the public assistance issued by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, with special focuses on: 1) the unit of self-support (based on an individual or a household), 2) the meanings of self-support (narrower sense or broader sense) and 3) conflicting perspectives on education (education as an end or as an instrument). This study concludes that: 1) children can go to high schools and other institutions of higher education as long as their decision is associated with self-support of households or children's economic independence; 2) going to high schools and institutions of higher education is regarded as an instrument for other ends (i.e. economic independence) ; 3) in the guidelines, we could not identify the perspectives that indicate education as an end and self-support in a broader sense.

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This study aims to examine the foundation of the child support allowance system. The Diet proceedings and newspaper reports during 1959-1961 show that the child support allowance is complementary to the mother and child welfare pension, and that it was later established as the precedence system of child allowance. Three main social factors led to the establishment of child support allowance. First, in the National Assembly, the national organizations widow Council had sought pension for divorced mothers with children. Second, in the budget of the Ministry of Health and Welfare's mother and child welfare pension, there was significant surplus due to errors in estimation. Third, child allowance founding was a policy issue at that time. Further, according to survey items for income and implementation status reported in "National Mother-and-child Household Survey Results Report", the child support allowance system was founded by conducting an adequate analysis of living conditions in divorced mother-and-child households.

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Child protection needs inter-profession work and community-based practice. Therefore this study attempted to show that inter-profession work has one of the aspects which can be measured by cognition of professions and it particularly focused on differences among localities. The two areas selected for this study were metropolitan Tokyo and Ishikawa Prefecture which have some differences in population structure, number of detected child abuse cases, and the system of child protection at the local level. A survey was taken, targeting at professions who work for child protection in the two areas. Analysis of the results showed that cognition about inter-profession work had different factor structures between Tokyo and Ishikawa. Moreover manifestation of a spurious correlation, which was shown between entitativity of inter-profession work and latency concepts of inter-profession work, differed between Tokyo and Ishikawa. Given this result, it is concluded that diverse types of inter-profession work exist in the practice of child protection; there is more than one right answer which we must construct the system of inter-profession work. It is seen as necessary that we bring out the potentials that diverse systems for inter-profession work in child protection have and we manage them with the strength and the vulnerability which a locality has.

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The aim of this paper is to examine the circumstances surrounding the Kawasaki Bus Disputes in a wider societal context than that considered by previous studies in order to reveal what conflicting values gave rise to the hardships faced by disabled passengers in this struggle. The Kawasaki Bus Disputes took place between 1976 and 1978 in Kawasaki City and surrounding areas; it was a conflict between passengers attempting to board buses in their wheelchairs and those who tried to restrict this. This paper examines the conflict in values that caused the disputes from the viewpoint of the disabled passengers. The paper finds that there was a strong perception in the community at the time that care for disabled persons was to be undertaken in the home or in care facilities, meaning that there was no basic grasp of the claims of the disabled passengers. It is also found that there was a particular lack of understanding of the assertion by disabled passengers that disabled care is everyone's responsibility; perceptions of this as mere "self-indulgence" exacerbated the conflict. Finally, it is found that the anxiety of working people regarding the degeneration of working conditions, along with the pre-existent mistrust among disabled passengers of other citizens and working people, further complicated and aggravated the conflict.

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Shoken Tokiwa was entrusted with reviving Tsubosaka-dera (Tsubosaka Temple), a historically famous temple that had fallen into ruin over time. At a time when Tokiwa lacked confidence in leading a life as a monk, he unexpectedly came across Ryokan. He sympathized with Ryokan's belief in and practice of the concept "People can be saved by considerate remarks," and he was convinced that it was the path to be taken. Tokiwa became a vice priest of Tsubosaka-dera and attempted to start a welfare service for blind people, as the temple had been associated with the blind since ancient times. However, the project required funds as well as the authorities' approval. Tokiwa visited companies in and around the Osaka area, even paying a visit to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, persistently explaining the blind people's circumstances, the relationship between the temple and the blind, and the necessity of welfare services for blind people. Tokiwa finally made himself understood and obtained the target amount of donations with the cooperation of various businesses. After becoming acquainted with Kenji Itayama, he was given the endorsement of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. This is how Jiboen, Japan's first elderly nursing home for blind people, was established in 1962.

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The Social Welfare Corporation Study Group published a book in 2006 that suggests that social welfare corporations should manage multiple welfare facilities, not just a single welfare facility to achieve economies of scale in order to adhere to the 2000 guidelines of "The Basic Structural Reform of Social Welfare". In 2008 the Study Group then published a guidebook titled "Manual for Social Welfare Corporation Merger, Acquisition and Alliance" as one means to encourage expansion of the scale of social welfare corporations. Although the annual number of social welfare corporation mergers has increased from four to over ten since the two reports were published, the annual number of social welfare corporation mergers has not increased since then. This raises the question: Do social welfare corporation mergers improve management efficiency? To address this question this study has two goals: The first goal is to classify the synergies accomplished through social welfare corporation mergers, using a general theoretical framework for understanding mergers and acquisitions (M&As). The second goal is to apply this theoretical framework to a sample of social welfare corporation merger cases and to identify the similarities between M&As in general and social welfare corporation mergers.

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