A Survey of Indoor Spaces at Elderly Welfare Facilities in Japan on How to Reflect Elders' Behavior Using a Checklist - Focused on 5 elderly welfare centers in Tokyo -

With the overall revision of the Welfare of the Aged Act in 1997, elderly welfare facilities have developed differently according to the size of locality, capacity, and social and economic characteristics. In response to the problem, various plans are being executed for expanding services and facilities for the aged. However, such efforts by the government have been focused on quantitative increase rather than on qualitative improvement, and there are not many high-quality elderly welfare facilities that meet the needs of the consumers, namely, the aged. In contrast, elderly welfare centers in Japan began to be founded from the 1960s and increased significantly from the 1970s and, as a result, 2,214 elderly welfare centers were in operation in 1995, maintaining a high level in quantity as well as in quality. Therefore, the present study surveyed using a checklist how elderly welfare centers in Japan, which are playing central roles in welfare facility services for the aged in Japan, design their indoor spaces reflecting elders' behavior and characteristics and, based on the results of the survey, classified spaces into shared spaces and individual service spaces and analyzed the spaces of each center using the checklist. The results from this case study will be used as basic data to establish standards for the space composition of elderly welfare facilities in Korea, which has 10 years' short history of elderly welfare facilities.