A survey by Japan's Administrative Evaluation Bureau found 15,607 registered foster households with no child placed with them, a share of 69.0%. At the same point, the foster placement rate for children under three stood at 25.3%, one third of the national target of 75%. This piece reads a policy in which raising registrations and raising placements are separate tasks, and only the one that is easy to count has moved.
TL;DR
- 15,607 registered foster households had no child placed with them, a share of 69.0%
- The placement rate for children under three was 25.3%, one third of the 75% national target
- The rate was 30.9% from age three to school entry and 21.7% from school age, both under half the target
As at the same point, fiscal 2021, 15,607 registered foster households had no child placed with them, a share of 69.0%, and that number has been rising alongside registrations. Of roughly 33,000 children placed in institutions or foster settings, 18.3% were with foster parents and 5.2% in family homes.
What Is Happening
Registrations are rising, yet nearly seven in ten have no child placed
The findings the Administrative Evaluation Bureau published in June 2024 set out the figures for Japan's foster care system.
Start with the scale. At the end of fiscal 2021, roughly 33,000 children were placed in children's homes, infant homes, foster families or family homes. Of those, 18.3% were with foster parents and 5.2% in family homes, giving a combined placement rate of about 20%.
The national government has set targets to raise this. 75% or more for children under three by the end of fiscal 2024, 75% or more from age three to school entry by the end of fiscal 2026, and 50% or more from school age by the end of fiscal 2029.
The actuals sit far below. At the end of fiscal 2021: 25.3% for under-threes, 30.9% from three to school entry, and 21.7% from school age. All are less than half the target, and the under-three figure is one third of it.
One more number completes the picture. 15,607 households were registered as foster carers with no child placed with them, 69.0% of registered households.
Background & Context
Placement rates are growing, but a gap of nearly three times the target remains
What grew was the household count, not the placement rate
Nothing is stalled. But it pays to be exact about what grew.
Registered foster households rose from 9,392 at the end of FY2012 to 15,607 at the end of FY2021, about 1.7 times. Meanwhile households actually caring for a child rose from 3,487 to 4,844, about 1.4 times.
1.7 times is households that registered; 1.4 times is households with a child. The placement rate itself is described as having risen by close to 10 percentage points against FY2012.
The fastest-growing group is households with no child
Line up three figures and it becomes clear where the growth is.
Registered households with no child placed rose from 5,905 at the end of FY2012 to 10,763 at the end of FY2021, and the unplaced rate went from 62.9% to 69.0%.
As ratios: registrations 1.66, placements 1.39, unplaced 1.82. The fastest growth is in households that registered and never received a child.
The share placed differs sharply by category
There are four categories of foster carer. Set registrations against placements by category and the gap shows.
At the end of FY2021, registrations comprised 12,934 fostering households, 6,291 adoption-intent households, 728 specialist households and 631 kinship households, with a total of 15,607 excluding double registrations. Placements comprised 3,888 fostering households, 569 kinship, 314 adoption-intent and 168 specialist, totalling 4,844.
Taken as a share within each category: fostering 30.1%, kinship 90.2%, specialist 23.1% and adoption-intent 5.0%.
Adoption-intent carers are those seeking to become adoptive parents. Of 6,291 registered households, 314 have a child. A large part of the unplaced total sits here.
234 child guidance centres, sixteen categories of work
Look at capacity too. There were 234 child guidance centres nationwide as of April 2024.
The work attached to foster care is extensive. The guidelines list training before and after registration, arranging weekend placements for prospective carers, tracking the situation and intentions of unplaced carers, preliminary work to select a suitable carer for a child, assessment of the child's development and relationship with their parents, selecting the carer, drawing up an independence support plan, mediating with birth parents, home visits and phone consultations, arranging respite care, running carer gatherings, handling the end of a placement and aftercare, sixteen items in all.
Staff have been added. Under successive national plans, the number of child welfare officers was to rise by about 2,330 by FY2022 against FY2015. That increase, though, was set against rising abuse caseloads.
Reading the Structure
Registrations are easy to count and easy to raise; placements turn on other conditions
Registration grows through recruitment; placement grows only through judgement
Registration and placement sit under the same phrase about advancing foster care, but they move on different conditions.
Registration is an entrance. What it needs is willing households. The system supplies recruitment and training. Run campaigns and information sessions and the number moves. It is straightforward for a local authority and the result is visible.
Placement is a matching. What it needs is judgement and support. A child guidance centre decides, for each child, where that child is best raised, and stays involved afterwards. Without staff, a careful decision gets deferred.
When only the countable side grows, the figures improve and nothing moves on the ground. The 69.0% unplaced rate is that state.
Which is moving faster, numerator or denominator
The rising unplaced rate carries its own meaning. Had placements grown as fast as registrations, the rate would have held steady. That it rose means registrations outpaced placements.
Which of the two is moving faster tells you where the policy is blocked.
22.7% gave up a placement because both partners work
One blockage is documented concretely.
In August 2023 the ministry surveyed the 2,735 foster households registered with the 29 child guidance centres covered by the study.
22.7% of dual-earner foster households reported having given up on receiving a child because both partners work, calculated on the 898 valid responses among 911 dual-earner households.
More than half of registered foster households are dual-earner. More than a fifth of them have abandoned a placement for that reason.
The concrete blockage is nursery admission
Why give up? A dual-earner household caring for a pre-school child needs a nursery place. That is where it stops.
Seven of the 29 child guidance centres said that a nursery place is essential when a pre-school child is placed with a dual-earner household, but that nothing gives priority on the ground that the child is in foster care, and asked that priority admission be made possible.
The state has issued a notice on this. It is not working on the ground. Asked about awareness of that work, four child guidance centres said the notice on priority nursery admission had not reached the centre or the municipal department concerned, and three said that although they knew of it, municipal childcare departments did not recognise children in foster care as a priority group, so explaining the need using the notice sometimes fails to persuade.
The notice exists. It has not arrived. Underneath a national placement rate sits an argument at a municipal childcare counter.
A cost that is paid for kindergarten and not for nursery
There is a second step in the design. Unlike attendance at kindergarten, the placement allowance is not paid where the child attends a nursery.
The ministry comments that although kindergartens and nurseries differ in purpose, in both cases a child is being left at an institution, nurseries are also expected to serve an educational function, and integrated centres have already lowered the boundary, so there is room to reconsider.
A dual-earner foster household using a nursery receives nothing. Given that more than half of registered households are dual-earner, that step bears directly on whether placements grow.
Aligning targets does not move the judgement or the support
The same property shows in how targets are handled. The state asks prefectures to set numerical targets in their next social care plans at, in principle, the same level as the national ones.
But between setting a target and meeting it sit the placement decision and the support system. Align the targets and nothing moves unless those change.
The ministry issued recommendations on this survey in June 2024 and published the first follow-up in January 2026.
How the choice of indicator drives the result is the problem covered in designing outcome indicators（このサイトの記事）. Measure what can be measured and what you wanted to measure drops out of view. The number of registered carers is no substitute for the number of placements.
What has to be counted before the next decision
What is known is household counts for registration and placement, the rate, and the difficulties gathered from the field. Two things are missing.
The first is how long households have been waiting. Years since registration are not published. Whether all 10,763 are waiting evenly or a subset has been stuck for a long time changes the meaning entirely.
The second is the full picture of why placements were abandoned. 22.7% is known for the dual-earner reason; abandonment for other reasons is not counted. Without a mechanism to count the matches that did not happen, the blockage can only be located by asking.
From the child's side, of the 33,157 children in care at the end of FY2021, 23,008 (69.4%) were in children's homes, 2,351 (7.1%) in infant homes, 6,080 (18.3%) with foster carers and 1,718 (5.2%) in family homes. Only a little over a fifth are growing up in something close to a family.
As 68.8% of children who died from abuse were under one（このサイトの記事） showed, the choice of environment at this age is hard to undo.
Further Reading
- 『子どもの貧困 — 日本の不公平を考える』 (Child Poverty: Considering Inequality in Japan)（外部サイト、新しいタブで開きます） (Aya Abe, Iwanami Shoten). A data-based account of where disadvantage in childhood arises and how it accumulates. Useful for thinking about how a choice of environment plays out later.
References
Survey on Social Care: Focusing on Foster Placement, Results Report — Administrative Evaluation Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (2024). Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications
Survey on Social Care: Focusing on Foster Placement, Recommendations Based on the Findings — Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (2024). Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications
Summary of Improvement Measures Against the Recommendations on Social Care and Foster Placement (First Follow-up) — Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (2026). Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications
Statistics cited in this article
- 1MIC Administrative Evaluation Bureau, Survey on Social Care: Focusing on Foster Placement, Results Report（June 2024） Open source
- 2MIC Administrative Evaluation Bureau, Survey on Social Care with a Focus on Foster Placement（June 2024） Open source
