Innovation: Power of Communities Promotion Division
Japan
AAI Domain: Participation in society (social connectedness, voluntary activities)
Japan is at the forefront of ageing societies with very high average life expectancy and older people constituting a large and growing proportion of the population. In general, older people are respected and valued in Japanese society for their achievements and wisdom so it was particularly shocking when a number of very old people who were assumed to be living well in the community were found to have had lonely deaths (kodokushi) with some people’s bodies not being discovered for years. This combination of an ageing society, a sense of respect for older people despite changing family structures and the scandal of kodokushi has made the development of social innovations an imperative.
In Tokyo, the area of Adachi with a population of around 670,000 people has pioneered a number of innovative projects to meet the challenges of an ageing population. In 2010, Adachi experienced the shocking case of an elderly man who had been dead for approximately 30 years but his body had never been discovered. In response to this and other cases across Japan, the city of Adachi established the Power of Communities Promotion Division (PCPD) in 2011.
Adachi is legally one of Tokyo’s special wards that shares in the financial and administrative systems of the Tokyo Metropolitan government but has a degree of autonomy over the provision of local services. The PCPD was charged with building greater social cohesion and resilience across Adachi and developed a series of innovative projects aimed at improving the health and well-being of older people through mobilising the power of the local community.
In 2012, the PCPD began the Juku de Danran (Group Fun in the Neighbourhood) project that facilitated a range of activities at senior citizens’ homes in the community. This was supplemented by the promotion of physical activity programmes for older people and the widespread encouragement of volunteering, especially among new residents in the area, that has long been a feature of neighbourhood life in Japanese villages and towns but was more difficult to sustain in large cities.
The PCPD established the Kaientai project to train local people to become community agents who act as the first port of call for people who are experiencing any difficulties in their daily lives. This was followed in January 2013 by the Zero Isolation project to address the potential social exclusion that people over the age of 70 could be experiencing.
In collaboration with more than 100 community organisations the project mobilised more than 500 volunteers, typically people in their fifties and sixties who wanted to make a contribution to their neighbourhood, to visit older people who did not currently subscribe to a public health insurance programme to assess their personal and social conditions. Older people who were judged to be socially excluded were offered follow up visits by Kizuna (the ties that bind) Relief Cooperative and were encouraged to attend local activities and groups. The Zero Isolation project mobilised more than 500 volunteers who identified nearly 700 older people who were considered to be socially excluded in its first year of operation.
In relation to active ageing, the Power of Communities Promotion Division aims to enhance social connectedness across the community with older people being the major priority group although the benefits of greater social cohesion would accrue to people of all ages who developed strong social bonds as a result of the innovative activities. A major feature is the mobilisation of volunteers, often people in their fifties and sixties, to directly contribute to building social cohesion within neighbourhoods. In ageing societies, especially in urban communities, the social bonds that link people together can become frayed and this solution from Japan shows some promise for building greater social cohesion.