A consumer cooperative association specializing in services for the elderly.
Over the past 10 years, a Japanese cooperative association named Fukushi Club Seikyo (FCS) has developed a unique, non-profit business specializing in services for the elderly. It aims to promote a reciprocal support system among neighborhood community members. FCS has successively organized its active members, mainly homemakers, into workers' collectives and successfully provided various life support services at a very small charge. Their human-touch service appears in sharp contrast to bureaucratic public services and profit-making private services. The civil initiative presented by FCS suggests a potential for a community-based social service system that may guarantee quality services without raising taxes and premiums for social insurance.
Oka
Masato
M
Economic Research Institute, Yokohama City University, Yokohama, Japan. okamasat@yokohama-cu.ac.jp
D003256:Community Participation / Q000379:methods*; D006299:Health Services for the Aged / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006699:Home Care Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006701:Home Nursing / Q000458:organization & administration; D016852:Housing for the Elderly; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan; D012947:Social Work / Q000458:organization & administration*