Practice of Comprehensive Business Restructuring in Hyogo Prefecture!
Hyogo Prefecture municipalities are being supported by TRAPE Inc. to restructure their Comprehensive Business for elderly care prevention and daily life support. The initiative focuses on a 'well-being design' approach to address challenges like an aging population and caregiver shortages, enabling local governments to proactively drive service improvements through dialogue and action.
📋 Article Processing Timeline
- 📰 Published: April 22, 2026 at 19:30
- 🔍 Collected: April 23, 2026 at 00:02 (4h 32m after Published)
- 🤖 AI Analyzed: April 23, 2026 at 01:47 (1h 45m after Collected)
The increase in elderly population, shortage of caregivers, and rising care benefit costs. As these local issues become apparent everywhere, many municipalities find themselves unable to proceed with designing or revising the Comprehensive Business for Elderly Care Prevention and Daily Life Support (hereinafter referred to as the Comprehensive Business) due to uncertainty about where to start.
For people, organizations, and regions facing such challenges, we design daily lives with roles and purpose suited to each individual through dialogue and system building. TRAPE Inc. calls this approach "well-being design" and operates with the vision of "Creating daily lives full of wonderful roles."
Our company has been entrusted with this project by Wakayama Prefecture since FY 2024 and has provided co-creation support. In two towns in Wakayama Prefecture that we supported in FY 2025, despite numerous accumulated issues, discussions stagnated, and business revisions were stalled.
However, through organizing issues, dialogue with stakeholders, and accumulating small actions, a change has emerged where municipalities are beginning to move proactively. This release introduces that process and its outcomes.
**[Voices of Municipalities Regarding Challenges with the Comprehensive Business]**
During the co-creation support in FY 2025, municipal officials in Hyogo Prefecture voiced the following concerns:
"Short-term intensive services are not working well."
"We haven't grasped the city's overall direction or specific challenges."
"We want to revise the Comprehensive Business, but we can't get consensus from stakeholders."
"We are discussing with stakeholders, but we're going in circles and not making progress."
Approximately 10 years have passed since the Comprehensive Business system was established in 2015.
Under the Comprehensive Business, municipalities are expected to take the lead in considering how elderly residents in their communities can continue to live their lives in a way that suits them, and to develop flexible services tailored to local conditions. However, in many cases, business design, operation, and collaboration among stakeholders are not functioning adequately according to local conditions, leading to many such challenging voices from municipal officials.
Although each municipality is making efforts through trial and error, it is difficult to find optimal solutions and directions, and many municipalities are currently exploring while facing challenges.
**[What is the FY 2025 Municipal Support Project for Hyogo Prefecture's Elderly Care Prevention and Daily Life Support Comprehensive Business?]**
The population size, aging rate, and challenges vary greatly among municipalities. Therefore, this project does not provide uniform training or know-how but offers individualized co-creation support tailored to each municipality's issues.
Municipalities take the initiative to organize issues and move towards solutions themselves. Supporting this process is the project's greatest feature. We aim to build a system that can continue autonomous initiatives through the experience of re-building services together while stakeholders engage in dialogue and face the current situation.
**[Features of TRAPE's Support for Municipalities]**
In many municipalities, the challenges of the Comprehensive Business are complexly intertwined, often leading to situations where "we don't know what the problem is" or "we don't know where to start."
Furthermore, attempts to directly implement successful cases or know-how from other municipalities often fail to yield the expected results.
Therefore, this project utilizes our "Community Building Support Handbook" to first engage in dialogue among stakeholders about the current situation and challenges, and to verbalize and share their respective perceptions and thoughts.
**[TRAPE's Three Key Points and Co-creation Process in Support]**
In promoting community building and elderly care prevention, the main actors are the municipalities. As a co-creation supporter, TRAPE values the following three points:
① Vision and Purpose are Paramount
We establish the direction of our efforts starting from the question: "How can we enable the elderly in our town to continue living their lives as they wish?"
② Dialogue is Crucial
Stakeholders connect, get to know each other, and new relationships are born—the cycle of dialogue unlocks the region's potential.
③ Experience is Important
Through a learning cycle of experience → reflection → internalization → actual trial, initiatives are steadily rooted.
In our support, instead of immediately starting business revisions, we formulate a medium-to-long-term roadmap through dialogue over the timeline of past, present, and future.
We grasp the current situation, draw a picture of the goals, and set phased objectives and small steps to fill the gap. By repeating trial and error, we collaboratively create a roadmap that all stakeholders can speak of as "our town's story."
**[Themes and Outcomes of Initiatives in Three Target Municipalities (Partial)]**
Asago City
Elaboration of the overall picture of the Comprehensive Business rebuilt based on vision and the details of visiting short-term intensive services (Enablement)
**[Challenges Before Starting Initiatives]**
After the start of the Comprehensive Business, visiting services have been implemented as "equivalent to previous services" and "visiting type A," but for day services, only "equivalent to previous services" are available.
Day Service
Keywords:
For people, organizations, and regions facing such challenges, we design daily lives with roles and purpose suited to each individual through dialogue and system building. TRAPE Inc. calls this approach "well-being design" and operates with the vision of "Creating daily lives full of wonderful roles."
Our company has been entrusted with this project by Wakayama Prefecture since FY 2024 and has provided co-creation support. In two towns in Wakayama Prefecture that we supported in FY 2025, despite numerous accumulated issues, discussions stagnated, and business revisions were stalled.
However, through organizing issues, dialogue with stakeholders, and accumulating small actions, a change has emerged where municipalities are beginning to move proactively. This release introduces that process and its outcomes.
**[Voices of Municipalities Regarding Challenges with the Comprehensive Business]**
During the co-creation support in FY 2025, municipal officials in Hyogo Prefecture voiced the following concerns:
"Short-term intensive services are not working well."
"We haven't grasped the city's overall direction or specific challenges."
"We want to revise the Comprehensive Business, but we can't get consensus from stakeholders."
"We are discussing with stakeholders, but we're going in circles and not making progress."
Approximately 10 years have passed since the Comprehensive Business system was established in 2015.
Under the Comprehensive Business, municipalities are expected to take the lead in considering how elderly residents in their communities can continue to live their lives in a way that suits them, and to develop flexible services tailored to local conditions. However, in many cases, business design, operation, and collaboration among stakeholders are not functioning adequately according to local conditions, leading to many such challenging voices from municipal officials.
Although each municipality is making efforts through trial and error, it is difficult to find optimal solutions and directions, and many municipalities are currently exploring while facing challenges.
**[What is the FY 2025 Municipal Support Project for Hyogo Prefecture's Elderly Care Prevention and Daily Life Support Comprehensive Business?]**
The population size, aging rate, and challenges vary greatly among municipalities. Therefore, this project does not provide uniform training or know-how but offers individualized co-creation support tailored to each municipality's issues.
Municipalities take the initiative to organize issues and move towards solutions themselves. Supporting this process is the project's greatest feature. We aim to build a system that can continue autonomous initiatives through the experience of re-building services together while stakeholders engage in dialogue and face the current situation.
**[Features of TRAPE's Support for Municipalities]**
In many municipalities, the challenges of the Comprehensive Business are complexly intertwined, often leading to situations where "we don't know what the problem is" or "we don't know where to start."
Furthermore, attempts to directly implement successful cases or know-how from other municipalities often fail to yield the expected results.
Therefore, this project utilizes our "Community Building Support Handbook" to first engage in dialogue among stakeholders about the current situation and challenges, and to verbalize and share their respective perceptions and thoughts.
**[TRAPE's Three Key Points and Co-creation Process in Support]**
In promoting community building and elderly care prevention, the main actors are the municipalities. As a co-creation supporter, TRAPE values the following three points:
① Vision and Purpose are Paramount
We establish the direction of our efforts starting from the question: "How can we enable the elderly in our town to continue living their lives as they wish?"
② Dialogue is Crucial
Stakeholders connect, get to know each other, and new relationships are born—the cycle of dialogue unlocks the region's potential.
③ Experience is Important
Through a learning cycle of experience → reflection → internalization → actual trial, initiatives are steadily rooted.
In our support, instead of immediately starting business revisions, we formulate a medium-to-long-term roadmap through dialogue over the timeline of past, present, and future.
We grasp the current situation, draw a picture of the goals, and set phased objectives and small steps to fill the gap. By repeating trial and error, we collaboratively create a roadmap that all stakeholders can speak of as "our town's story."
**[Themes and Outcomes of Initiatives in Three Target Municipalities (Partial)]**
Asago City
Elaboration of the overall picture of the Comprehensive Business rebuilt based on vision and the details of visiting short-term intensive services (Enablement)
**[Challenges Before Starting Initiatives]**
After the start of the Comprehensive Business, visiting services have been implemented as "equivalent to previous services" and "visiting type A," but for day services, only "equivalent to previous services" are available.
Day Service
Keywords: