Residences for people with disabilities are currently in flux in Japan, tending more toward small homes in their familiar, residential areas and away from institutions in remote areas. Group homes were required by the act of the Diet entitled “Services and Supports for Persons with Disabilities Act.” of 2006. Individuals with any kind of disability could reside in such homes. However, it appears that people with physical disabilities occupy such homes at a lower rate than people with intellectual and other disabilities. Information on the architectural planning of group homes for people with physical disabilities is very scarce.
Here, we study wheelchair accessible group homes (WAGHs) in Japan, to contribute to the construction of a place of residence in the area of severely disabled people. We conducted a questionnaire survey for WAGHs nationwide, field survey and interview survey for 11 WAGHs selected which take care of severely disabled people who use wheelchair.
According to the questionnaire survey, it was revealed that resident in the WAGHs were not only physically disabled people but also people with multiple disabilities, such as intellectual and physical disabilities. As for the degree of the disabilities, residents in the WAGHs were more likely to have more severe disabilities than those in the general group homes for people with disabilities. In addition, in spite of the fact that a large number of residents needs assistance when they bathe, most of the WAGHs had no special bathing facilities such as mechanical baths. Regarding the land and buildings, managing corporations tended to own the land and buildings by themselves, and use newly built buildings instead of the existing buildings. In addition, the capacity and total floor area of the WAGHs tended to be larger than the general GHs. Also, as a result of the analysis of floor plans, it turned out that the WAGHs tended to have larger bathrooms and dressing rooms than general group homes for people with disabilities.
In the field and interview surveys in 11 WAGHs, it was revealed that the majority of the people who wanted to establish the WAGHs were the parents of the people with disabilities. In terms of the difficulties in establishing the WAGHs, the most frequently suggested point was to find and acquire the land with necessary conditions, such as sufficient area. In many cases, the capacity of the WAGHs was firstly decides. After the capacity had been decided, land which could accommodate the capacity was searched. As a characteristic of the operation of the WAGHs, the same number of the caregivers as residents were arranged at dinner time in 6 WAGHs. If these caregivers were not the staff of the WAGHs, basically these caregivers were dispatched from care worker dispatch centers operated the same corporation. Most of the residents in the WAGHs are using day-care centers operated the same corporation as the WAGHs.
These survey results show that WAGH requires a large area in bathrooms and dressing rooms, so it is difficult to open it unless it is newly constructed. This fact suggests, at the same time, that it is difficult to rent and use existing buildings, which means the managing corporation need to prepare large amount of money in order to acquire the land and buildings. This is considered to be one major reason why the number of the WAGHs is scarce. In order to facilitate to establish WAGHs, it is necessary to create an assistant system to acquire land and buildings.
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