■英文要約
This paper reviews trends in policies regarding people with disabilities and the disabled movement that developed in relation to these policies following the introduction of public long-term-care insurance. People with disabilities opposed being put into the long-term-care insurance system established in April of 2004 because it would not allow them to live at home without placing a burden on their families. At that time they were not brought into this system. Beginning in April of 2003 the system of welfare for people with disabilities moved to a support payment system. This was basically just a partial change in the form of support supplied, but services which people with disabilities had essentially already obtained were recorded in a menu of services available and in practice this had the effect of informing people about the services already being used. The budget for related services had been expanded in 2002, and when in January of 2003 the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare stated its intention to impose an upper limit on services provided in conjunction with the introduction of the support payment system this announcement was met with strong opposition. As a result of this opposition the support payment system was implemented without an upper limit and a committee was established to consider how the system should be run in the future. Here once again an integration with long-term-care insurance containing restrictions regarding amounts of support was proposed. In this way the relationship between policymakers and people with disabilities continued to be strained. This series of events was also in part the result of the system of services obtained and spread throughout the country through the long efforts of the disabled movement. Restrictions were seen as necessary because of this movement's success in expanding support provided. Another factor which has caused difficulties for the disabled movement is the awareness, spread widely throughout society including in the mass media, of the limitations on available resources imposed by an aging society.