In Nakai Town, more than one in three people will be elderly in 2025, as the baby-boomer generation enters the latter-stage of the elderly population (75 years and over). At this time, the latter-stage elderly is estimated to be over 60% of the whole elderly population. Since the majority of the people who receive long-term care insurance services are the elderly aged 75 and over, it is expected that a growing number of people will use the nursing-care insurance in the future.
However, since the population of Nakai Town is ageing and declining, the number of people who pay the cost of long-term care insurance is expected to decrease greatly. If current situation continues, the management of long-term care insurance services will face great challenges.
Based on regional cooperation and support, Nakai Town has continuously worked on to achieve “community based integrated care system,” providing long-term care insurance and healthcare/welfare services in a comprehensive manner.
From fiscal year 2015, in order to further advance the community based integrated care system based on a mid- to long-term perspective looking toward 2025, we have developed policies such as promotion of collaboration of home health care and nursing care, improvement of the framework for life support and long-term care prevention services, and coordination with measures to provide the elders with stable housing environment.
From now on, based on the basic philosophy “Nakai, a town where elderly people can live a peaceful life in their own way,” Nakai Town will strengthen the foundation of a system that allows elderly people to live in their community safely, while promoting the necessary measures to ensure that the long-term care insurance system can be continued and maintained for long years with stability.
In the Western Area of Kanagawa Prefecture, municipalities including Nakai Town have a close relationship historically and geographically. Kanagawa Prefectural Government positioned this area as a “strategic area for improvement of ME-BYO” and has promoted projects to revitalize this area in order to extend healthy life expectancy of the people living in and visiting to the area. In order to make Nakai Town more age-friendly, we will join the projects collaborating with Kanagawa Prefectural Government and other municipalities in this area and aim to extend healthy life expectancy of the town. Also, we will listen to the needs of the elderly, the opinions of citizens and experts, and reflect these factors on our policies. And by linking with the comprehensive plan of Nakai Town, we will implement age-friendly projects in various fields.
(ME-BYO: Rather than regarding health and illness as being mutually exclusive, the concept of ME-BYO views a person’s mental and physical condition as continuously changing along a spectrum between health and illness).