When accepting Specified Skilled Workers, nursing care staff also need to prepare for various processes. Building a support system is especially important. Foreign nationals often come alone to a place where they have no friends, acquaintances, or family, so they need help preparing a foundation for daily life and much more. Here I introduce the three points my facility addressed first.

Securing Housing

Most people who come as Specified Skilled Workers are from developing countries rather than developed countries like Japan, and often have limited funds. Whereas we would normally search for and sign a lease on an apartment ourselves when starting a job, they often lack the money to do so, so the facility secures housing for them. An apartment or condominium is fine, but a convenient location for providing support is recommended.
For example, check whether there is a supermarket or home improvement store nearby so they can smoothly buy daily necessities, and if not, whether transportation to those places can be arranged.

At my facility, a detached house used when accepting technical intern trainees is made available, and several people live there together.

Preparing Manuals

Many facilities already have manuals in place, but those alone are not enough.
That is because they are written on the assumption that certain things are “common knowledge” or “obvious if you think about it normally.”
Specified Skilled Workers receive training after entering Japan and study various topics, but they do not learn that much. Therefore, you need to teach them from the ground up; otherwise there is a risk of serious accidents, so caution is required.

In my case, the hardest parts were adding furigana to kanji and dealing with dialect. Even though they have studied Japanese, they generally do not know difficult kanji, so furigana is necessary. There were also materials written in dialect, and converting them into standard Japanese was a lot of work.

③ Assigning Support Staff

Specified Skilled Workers encounter various difficulties in daily life. We can consult family or friends, but they do not have those people, so a support person steps in to listen and help. You need to check on many things—whether they are managing daily life properly by visiting their home, whether they are getting along with neighbors, and whether they are causing any trouble. Of course other staff should also look out for them, but if too many people are assigned as contacts, they will not know whom to ask for help and information sharing becomes difficult, so I recommend clearly designating a support person.

Summary

When supporting Specified Skilled Workers, there are many things to consider. At first I also found it troublesome, but as I watched how straightforward and dedicated they were in their work, I began to think they might even be better than hiring Japanese staff, and supporting them no longer felt like a burden. The points introduced here are ones you should keep in mind, but there are many other points as well.

Staff from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare will be assigned and will tell you what you need to prepare in advance, but facilities also have their own rules and regional characteristics, so you need to think things through yourselves.