Community Support for Foreign Senior Care Workers in Rural Japan and the Factors that Affect Perception of Receiving Care

Japanese senior care demands have seen significant growth over the last several decades from a dramatic increase in the senior demographic (+65 in age), a high senior concentration in the current Japanese society brought about by age longevity, and the improved quality standard of care and greater accessibility by the governments revision of the Long‐term Care Insurance (LTCI) program. The supply side is also suffering from both a decreasing population growth of youth category (14 and younger) and a static graduation rate of new nursing that is not growing commensurate with the demand. The government has begun to understand these detrimental factors and further revised national immigration policy to categorize senior care aid workers as skilled labor. The growth in demand for senior care services, the static domestic labor structure, and the new leniency of immigration policies has created various opportunities for foreign workers who are considering Japan as their new country of residence. The greater inflow of migrants into Japan could be a solution that can bring the country back to an acceptable level of prosperity and high quality‐of‐life for the senior population that the nation once had in the stable‐growth period.However, there is a significant difference between attracting foreign migrants to the Japanese senior care industry and retaining the migrants once they are working in their full capacity. This paper introduces survey research to identify if community survey participants agree with migration in senior care and which factors affect their perception of receiving care from foreign caregivers. The survey includes 563 citizens within 12 different cities chosen randomly within Page | 1 Hiroshima, Shimane, and Yamaguchi prefectures. Their feedback on the opinion has highlighted several weaknesses in society that can be mitigated through appropriate public policy revision, community development, and legal protections. It is important to react in the short term to reverse the negative trends; especially, since foreigners are becoming harder to attract due to the stagnation economic conditions of Japan and the continued growth of the senior citizen base in need of qualified care.