Aging & Society: Eighth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

Integrated community care support centers conduct preventive care management as well as various supportive interventions for frail community-dwelling elderly people. Three professionals, namely, a chief care manager, a social worker, and a public nurse, should be placed at each center, working in collaboration. Given the increasingly complex needs in the community and their multiple duties, these professionals may suffer from enormous stress, which is an emerging concern. This study investigates their current working conditions and status of mental health. A mailing survey was conducted among all support center professional workers (N = 150) in A-City in Tokyo in early 2018. The response rate was 49%. Quantitative analyses indicated that 1) three-fourths of the respondents feel they are overworking, 2) more than half of them consider case work with complex needs and advocacy as difficult tasks, 3) dissatisfaction with working environments is lower compared with other job satisfaction dimensions, and 4) poor health and excessive duties tend to bring significant harm to their mental health. Improving the working environment of the professionals at integrated community care support centers is crucial to constructing and maximizing the function of the integrated community care system in Japan.