This article critically examines the UK's policy on young carers and identifies its shortcomings. Even though UK law and academic discussion about young carers are seen as the most advanced in terms of quantity and quality, the number of young carers in the UK has been understated or incorrectly estimated. In response to the growing public awareness, a legal category for young caregivers was created, and allowances and other forms of financial support were instituted to help them. However, due to age, hours spent caring, and time spent in school eligibility regulations, young carers, in addition to suffering from poverty and socioeconomic disadvantage, are more likely than their peers of the same age to have problems with personal well-being and mental and physical development. The trouble that the British Young Carer Policy is having presents a point of consideration for Korean policymakers.
This article examines the current state of and policies in place for young caregivers in Japan and makes recommendations for policy in Korea. Some ten years ago, Japanese civic society and academia began to pay attention to the issue of young carers. As a result, some Japanese cities established ordinances to support young carers. In recent years, the Japanese government has surveyed carers among primary and secondary school students. However, the Japanese government's strategy in this regard does not extend much beyond bringing young carers to public attention and identifying them early on, leaving the country unable to systematically address the problem of young carers resulting from the current family-oriented welfare system. The Japanese experience highlights the need for Korea, which has a welfare system akin to Japan’s, to analyze the root causes of the problems it has to address for its young carers.
Finland has never conducted an official count of its young carers despite having an advanced welfare system. As adult morbidity rises, so does the number of cases in which children care for their parents. However, the issue of young carers has received little attention in the fields of research and social and health policy. Although Finnish law recognizes how parental illness affects children's well-being, there are few policy measures in place to mitigate this effect. This article examines why public awareness regarding young carers remains low in Finland and why policy progress in this area has been slow.
In Sweden, research on young caregivers began in earnest in 2010, led by the government. This article examines how family care activities during adolescence affect the carer, assuming that mental health in adolescence and youth is a key factor in economic and social development in adulthood. Policy implications can be found in profiles of Swedish families where young caregivers are likely to live and research aimed at creating conditions that lessen the adverse impacts of caregiving based on how children and young people themselves view it. Some Swedish studies conducted that look at the social and cultural aspects of immigrant families, whose population share has been growing in recent years, also have policy implications for Korea.
In light of the latest developments in the UK government's childcare policy, this article attributes the high cost of child care services for parents in the UK to three structural issues: (a) the UK’s method of financing child care services is complex; (b) there is no policy-level support for care services for infants and toddlers (ages 0-2); and (c) the UK’s child care is heavily market-based, guided by neoliberal principles, with minimal state intervention. This article concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of the UK case for Korea, where all eligible families have had free child care since 2013.
For the last 40 years, the UK has been implementing community-centered policies (community care), providing the most vulnerable populations, including the disabled, with integrated services that combine medical care and welfare based on housing support, such as housing supply and residential environment improvement. The UK has a multilateral housing assistance policy in place and is continuing to pursue initiatives like providing homes and enhancing the living environment in order to assist the most disadvantaged parts of its population. In particular, Disabled Facilities Grants were established to assist in covering the cost of building new homes for individuals with disabilities and to promote community independence by improving their living circumstances. The use of assistive technology in the home is one of several housing support measures that are in place. The UK's experience is regarded to have significant implications for Korea, which is transitioning to a community-based strategy for supporting disabled people's housing.
Japan's approach to supporting children with disabilities underwent a period of significant change with the 2012 amendment of the Child Welfare Act. As a consequence, Japan's formerly disjointed support services for children with disabilities have been reformed into an integrated system. Children with disabilities in Japan can benefit from continuous institutional care and education services from infancy through school age under this policy. Such services are delivered via collaborative efforts by a variety of parties, including ministries, local governments, and facilities. Also, these services are offered in a variety of ways to make sure that children with disabilities are not treated unfairly and to promote their rights and social inclusion.
This article discusses the present state of older workers and the unemployed in the US and outlines several vocational training programs and employment efforts that are ongoing in the US for the elderly. The federal government has been running job training and employment programs for senior citizens through hub centers established in each state, which has greatly promoted senior workers’ reemployment. Given that the risks of unemployment associated with the COVID-19 pandemic are highly concentrated among older workers, the effectiveness of US vocational training and employment programs for senior citizens has substantial implications for similar policies and programs in Korea. The government should work in concert with communities to support active and healthy aging. These efforts should be carried out through the creation of government-affiliated programs and of a professional workforce tasked with job training and employment for older workers, national evaluation systems to track the efficacy of these programs, and continued awareness raising.
On October 10, 2022, the German federal government proposed a bill to the federal parliament, in a bid to adopt Citizens' Allowance, a new long-term unemployment insurance scheme. Citizens' Allowance will replace the Hartz II benefit scheme, which has been in effect since 2005 as a result of the Hartz reform. However, the idea of Citizens' Allowance adoption has sparked a major social dabate in Germany. This article looks at the background, components, and critiques of the Hartz II program and goes through some of the objections leveled toward Citizens' Allowance. This article also examines the implications that these German discussions have for Korea's policies on unemployment assistance.
