Community Life Support System for People with Severe Physical Disabilities with Informal Support

Research Project

Project/Area Number	22730468
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Social welfare and social work studies
Research Institution	Tokyo Institute of Technology (2011) National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities (2010)
Principal Investigator	MARUOKA Toshinori 東京工業大学, 大学院・社会理工学研究科, 東工大特別研究員 (20455380)
Project Period (FY)	2010 – 2011
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 2011)
Budget Amount *help	¥3,250,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,500,000、Indirect Cost: ¥750,000) Fiscal Year 2011: ¥910,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000、Indirect Cost: ¥210,000) Fiscal Year 2010: ¥2,340,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,800,000、Indirect Cost: ¥540,000)
Keywords	社会関係 / 自立生活 / 社会学 / 生活記録
Research Abstract	The purpose of this study was to quantify the methods of community life support system for people with severe physical disabilities using the stable informal support. Three methods were used to quantify the community life support system : 1) a one-week survey of daily activities in people with severe physical disabilities, 2) observation of community activities group which consists of people with severe physical disabilities and healthy adults, and 3) a two case studies of community life support. The results indicated that voluntary actions by people with severe physical disabilities encouraged interactions among the community members, which provided informal support to themselves in return. In addition, personal network support from the community allows the members to share their values of community life of people with severe physical disabilities, whereby increased voluntary actions in people with severe physical disabilities. The informal support appears to be a useful resource for people with severe physical disabilities in their community life support system.