Japan’s ‘Community-Based Small-Scale Foster Homes’

Abstract This article examines the institutionalisation of Japan’s ‘community-based small-scale foster homes’ using the multiple streams framework. Unlike many OECD countries that prioritise foster families, Japan developed intermediate services between family-based and institutional care. Drawing on the three streams of the framework, this study finds that early problematisation by facility operators and precursor policies laid the groundwork, but convergence occurred only with heightened political salience of child abuse following Japan’s ratification of the Convention on the Right of the Child and the attention of mass media. Group Homes ( GH s) were ultimately framed as part of self-reliant living assistance, illustrating a contingent, politically mediated policy outcome.