The Health and Welfare Ministry will assign child-care experts to public health facilities nationwide from fiscal 2001 to identify signs of child abuse when parents bring their children in for mandatory health checkups, ministry officials said Friday.
The officials said the scheme is part of a package of measures for fiscal 2001, which starts in April, aimed at curbing the alarming rise in child-abuse cases.
The child-care experts will try to detect early signs of child abuse by observing how parents and children interact in various group games that will be organized as part of the scheme.
Counselors will also be assigned to public health facilities to talk with parents suffering from stress or other problems related to rearing children.
The new system will cover children aged between 18 months and 3 years who must be brought in for free health checks by law.
The child-care experts and counselors will be assigned to groups of 45 to 50 parents and children in each city, town and village nationwide.
Currently, mandatory health checks for infants and toddlers are used to identify signs of stunted growth or other medical problems, the officials said.
The ministry plans to ask for 280 million yen to fund the system, out of the 2.14 billion yen funding it hopes to secure for its child-abuse prevention program.
Ministry officials said other measures in the program include dispatching psychiatrists to child-consultation centers.