The Upper House passed a revised bill on Friday allowing authorities to restrict welfare facility visits for parents suspected of abusing their child.

The revision to the child welfare law is intended to protect children in cases where contact with their parents is considered likely to cause emotional or physical harm. The changes are scheduled to take effect in October.

Under the current law, parents can be barred from seeing or contacting their child in temporary custody if they are deemed abusive. In some cases, visitations can also be restricted when abuse is only suspected, but the process tends to take more time.

Under the revision, if parents are considered likely to cause harm to the child, their requests for visitation can be denied even if they are only suspected of abuse. The change is intended to help prevent conflicts between parents and child welfare centers.

Furthermore, if the parents are thought to be a danger to the child, the welfare centers will be allowed to withhold the child＊s location.

The revision includes other new policies, such as making it obligatory for staff at nurseries and kindergartens to report cases of child abuse to local authorities. Currently, only child consultation center staff are subjected to such obligations.

Reported cases of child abuse are on the rise in Japan. According to the most recent numbers by the health ministry, there were a record 225,509 cases of child abuse that authorities acted on in the year ending March 2024.

The most common form of abuse was psychological, including verbal threats and discriminatory treatment, accounting for nearly 60% of cases. This was followed by physical abuse and neglect.

In more than half of the cases, reports of abuse came from the police. Other common sources included acquaintances and neighbors, who accounted for nearly 10%, and other family members or relatives, at 8.5%.

The bill also attempts to tackle labor shortages at child care facilities by expanding a special day care teacher qualification 〞 which allows individuals to work only in the area where they are employed 〞 from certain regions to the entire country.

This prefecture-based system allows for people who have taken the required exam and lectures to be employed as a child care worker in that municipality without having to pass the national nursery teacher exam. The government plans to expand this system to more areas facing severe child care worker shortages.