Resolving Labor Shortages in Caregiving: A Win-Win 'New Job' Connecting Facilities and Communities

TRAPE Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Osaka City, Osaka Prefecture; CEO: Hiroaki Kamata), which has been involved in national policy-making and leading the transformation of the nursing care field since 2017—including the creation of guidelines for improving productivity in nursing care settings—aims to realize nursing care facilities full of well-being. The company provides the free online tool 'Seisansei Kojo-kun®', essential for team building, visualizing, and analyzing issues in frontline business improvement and DX. They also offer 'Sociwell', a hands-on support service that simultaneously achieves 'productivity improvement', 'enhanced job satisfaction', and 'leader development'. Amidst these activities, TRAPE was commissioned for the 'Reiwa 7 Yamanashi Prefecture Care Assistant Popularization and Promotion Project' and provided hands-on support to model facilities for utilizing care assistants. As a result, we successfully unearthed the potential needs of local residents who 'want to work in their spare time' as care assistants. This allowed care workers to secure the peace of mind and time needed to face their core specialized care duties and the users. It gave local residents rewarding opportunities to play an active role, while users received more generous services. We are pleased to report this positive, 'Win-Win-Win' cycle benefiting the frontline, the community, and the users. What is the Reiwa 7 Yamanashi Prefecture 'Care Assistant Popularization and Promotion Project'? This project, led by the Yamanashi Prefectural Council of Social Welfare under commission from Yamanashi Prefecture, aims to promote the widespread use of care assistants to secure and retain care personnel, ensure the quality of care, and encourage the participation of diverse human resources in the nursing care field. Heading toward 2040, the population aged 85 and over—where care demand is particularly high—will increase, while the working-age population is expected to rapidly decline due to the progression of a declining birthrate and aging society. To meet the diversifying and complex needs in care settings with limited human resources, it is necessary to advance functional differentiation according to the career and expertise of care workers and to practice team care where diverse human resources collaborate. Therefore, Yamanashi Prefecture refers to care assistants as 'Care Assistants' and is promoting their widespread use as personnel who handle 'indirect tasks' other than care that involves direct physical contact with users. By borrowing the hands of new personnel such as care assistants, the prefecture aims to create an environment where professional care workers can concentrate on highly specialized tasks, thereby improving the workplace environment. Furthermore, by creating these new roles, the project aims to encourage diverse human resources, including the elderly, to enter the nursing care field, ultimately helping to secure care personnel. Main Project Contents Comprehensive support ranging from introduction assistance based on the 'Care Assistant Introduction Flow to Prevent Mismatches', preparation and operational support for explanatory meetings for residents, to effect verification and the holding of results reporting sessions after introduction. Holding seminars for business operators, explaining detailed step-by-step initiatives, establishing individual consultation windows, and creating manuals aimed at spreading the initiatives throughout the prefecture. Care Assistants are a 'New Job' that supports the expertise of the caregiving frontline. A care assistant is a 'new job (role)' that supports the creation of an environment where care professionals can concentrate on 'specialized tasks'. The work of caregiving, which supports people's daily lives, is broadly divided into 'direct tasks' and 'indirect tasks'. Direct tasks: Tasks involving direct interaction with users, such as assistance with meals, bathing, excretion, and mobility (specialized tasks that should originally be undertaken). Indirect tasks: Tasks that do not involve direct interaction with users but arrange a comfortable living environment, such as cleaning and laundry (tasks requiring no qualifications). Because caregiving work supports 'daily life', there are tasks within it that can be done if one possesses 'general life skills' (indirect tasks). Until now, all tasks in care settings have been handled by professionals. However, in a super-aging society with a declining birthrate, the demand for care is increasing while the working-age population is shrinking. Even under these circumstances, many care facilities are taking on the challenge of maintaining and improving the quality of care. As one strategy for this, the goal is to realize high-quality care that attentively stays close to each individual user by classifying tasks into 'direct' and 'indirect' and dividing roles, thereby setting up a system where care workers can concentrate on specialized tasks. The ones responsible for these 'indirect tasks' are 'Care Assistants', and no special qualifications are required to become one. Results of this project (excerpt) Amidst difficulties in recruiting staff, this project recruited 4 care assistants using local human resources. By securing more personnel than initially anticipated, a system was built to handle indirect tasks such as linen exchange and room cleaning, which previously could not be fully addressed. As a result, professionals were able to concentrate on the care tasks they originally needed to undertake, such as walking training that could not be adequately implemented before.