TOKYO: Almost nine out of 10 children taken from their families in Japan end up in institutions rather than foster care, a rights group said yesterday, a rate it said was the highest among developed nations.
Just 12 percent of children who have been removed from their natural parents are placed with foster families, leaving tens of thousands of other youngsters to languish in understaffed children’s homes, Human Rights Watch said.
That figure is the lowest in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a club of rich nations, and is just a fraction of that in Australia, where 93.5 percent of these children live in a family home.
“It’s heartbreaking to see children crammed into institutions and deprived of the chance for life in a caring family setting,” said Kanae Doi, Japan director at Human Rights Watch.
In neighbouring South Korea, 43.6 percent of children end up in foster care. In the United States, it is 77.0 percent, while in Britain it is 71.7 percent.
The 119-page report says 39,000 children in Japan have been removed from their families by the authorities, who determined their parents were either unable or unwilling to look after them.
The report, compiled over a three-year period, found Japan’s child guidance centres -- the local administrative bodies charged with dealing with children in care -- are “predisposed to institutionalising children rather than placing them in adoption or foster care.”
AFP
