ID :
171121
Sun, 03/27/2011 - 17:30
Auther :
Shortlink :
https://oananews.org//node/171121
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FOCUS: Efforts to search children orphaned by quake face challenges
SENDAI, March 27 Kyodo - Child welfare officials have launched an extensive search for children who have lost their parents or have gone missing in parts of northeastern Japan ravaged by the catastrophic March 11 earthquake and subsequent tsunami.
Their efforts, however, may be hindered by the sheer scale of destruction that is still hampering local administrative services. Experts also note the latest disaster poses greater challenges in locating such children than the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake which hit western Japan regions such as Hyogo Prefecture.
Search efforts moved into full swing Saturday in Iwate Prefecture, one of the three prefectures that suffered the heaviest tolls.
Child welfare specialists have gathered from various parts of the country for this unusual mission under the initiative of the central government.
Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, the other prefectures that were most severely damaged, are also preparing to accept those specialists and are expected to request their dispatches soon.
In Iwate, 17 specialists including psychologists and child minders from nurseries in Hokkaido, Aomori, Akita, Tokyo and Kanagawa have arrived. On Saturday, they met local counterparts and started their searches in the cities of Kamaishi, Ofunato and Rikuzentakata and the town of Otsuchi.
The experts will initially work in groups of three and look for children without parents at evacuation shelters along with people in charge at the shelters.
If there are any children who have no place to go, the specialists are planning to entrust them to temporary care homes at child consultation centers or host parents.
But those temporary care homes and regular homes for children are running at full capacity in various parts of the country in the wake of an increasing number of children that need to be protected from neglect and abuse by their parents.
Of the 17 specialists, six from Yokohama central child consultation center in Kanagawa Prefecture drove in two cars to Iwate, carrying their own foods and gasoline. They are planning to check shelters in Rikuzentakata and Ofunato while sleeping at municipal assembly halls.
The two cities have more than 100 mini shelters, many of them spread out. Local government officials there are preoccupied with identifying deceased victims and restoring vital infrastructure, leaving limited resources to help the child experts from other prefectures.
Akira Katsusawa, the head of the Yokohama central child consultation center, said, ''It is a scale (of work) unimaginable but we hope to do as much as we possibly can.''
The Iwate prefectural government is considering asking the central government to build a boarding school if there are many children who have no one else to rely on.
Muneyuki Sato of the child support division of the Miyagi prefectural government, said, ''Some local governments are not functioning. Some regions even declined our offer to help search.''
The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said it had some information about children having lost their parents in the disaster areas that it had not been able to follow up on.
In the aftermath of the Great Hanshin earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 in January 1995, 68 children, aged below 18, were left orphaned. There were 332 others who lost one parent.
The March 11 quake in northeastern Japan is believed to have left more children parentless, given its magnitude was far greater at 9.0 and the quake was followed by the gigantic tsunami from the Pacific that wreaked havoc on a wide coastal region.
A Hyogo prefectural official who was engaged in child searches after the Great Hanshin quake said, ''It was an early morning earthquake when children were with their parents and heavy damage was limited to certain areas. Schools were also operating (soon after the quake) and we could gather information quickly.''
The March 11 quake occurred at 2:46 p.m., when many children would have been at school, away from their parents.
Yasuo Matsubara, who teaches theories in child welfare at Meiji Gakuin University, noted the need for providing ample psychiatric care, saying, ''If children are left in a condition without knowing where their parents may be, many of them will be psychologically unstable.''
''What they need is a place to live in peace and adults who will be with them when they need them,'' he said.
Current regulations require people to have a certain annual income and to receive training before they are certified as foster parents. Matsubara suggests a more flexible arrangement be made so that more people can participate in the foster parent program.
Their efforts, however, may be hindered by the sheer scale of destruction that is still hampering local administrative services. Experts also note the latest disaster poses greater challenges in locating such children than the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake which hit western Japan regions such as Hyogo Prefecture.
Search efforts moved into full swing Saturday in Iwate Prefecture, one of the three prefectures that suffered the heaviest tolls.
Child welfare specialists have gathered from various parts of the country for this unusual mission under the initiative of the central government.
Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, the other prefectures that were most severely damaged, are also preparing to accept those specialists and are expected to request their dispatches soon.
In Iwate, 17 specialists including psychologists and child minders from nurseries in Hokkaido, Aomori, Akita, Tokyo and Kanagawa have arrived. On Saturday, they met local counterparts and started their searches in the cities of Kamaishi, Ofunato and Rikuzentakata and the town of Otsuchi.
The experts will initially work in groups of three and look for children without parents at evacuation shelters along with people in charge at the shelters.
If there are any children who have no place to go, the specialists are planning to entrust them to temporary care homes at child consultation centers or host parents.
But those temporary care homes and regular homes for children are running at full capacity in various parts of the country in the wake of an increasing number of children that need to be protected from neglect and abuse by their parents.
Of the 17 specialists, six from Yokohama central child consultation center in Kanagawa Prefecture drove in two cars to Iwate, carrying their own foods and gasoline. They are planning to check shelters in Rikuzentakata and Ofunato while sleeping at municipal assembly halls.
The two cities have more than 100 mini shelters, many of them spread out. Local government officials there are preoccupied with identifying deceased victims and restoring vital infrastructure, leaving limited resources to help the child experts from other prefectures.
Akira Katsusawa, the head of the Yokohama central child consultation center, said, ''It is a scale (of work) unimaginable but we hope to do as much as we possibly can.''
The Iwate prefectural government is considering asking the central government to build a boarding school if there are many children who have no one else to rely on.
Muneyuki Sato of the child support division of the Miyagi prefectural government, said, ''Some local governments are not functioning. Some regions even declined our offer to help search.''
The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said it had some information about children having lost their parents in the disaster areas that it had not been able to follow up on.
In the aftermath of the Great Hanshin earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3 in January 1995, 68 children, aged below 18, were left orphaned. There were 332 others who lost one parent.
The March 11 quake in northeastern Japan is believed to have left more children parentless, given its magnitude was far greater at 9.0 and the quake was followed by the gigantic tsunami from the Pacific that wreaked havoc on a wide coastal region.
A Hyogo prefectural official who was engaged in child searches after the Great Hanshin quake said, ''It was an early morning earthquake when children were with their parents and heavy damage was limited to certain areas. Schools were also operating (soon after the quake) and we could gather information quickly.''
The March 11 quake occurred at 2:46 p.m., when many children would have been at school, away from their parents.
Yasuo Matsubara, who teaches theories in child welfare at Meiji Gakuin University, noted the need for providing ample psychiatric care, saying, ''If children are left in a condition without knowing where their parents may be, many of them will be psychologically unstable.''
''What they need is a place to live in peace and adults who will be with them when they need them,'' he said.
Current regulations require people to have a certain annual income and to receive training before they are certified as foster parents. Matsubara suggests a more flexible arrangement be made so that more people can participate in the foster parent program.
