私達法人職員は、高齢者と幼児、そして障害者の幸せ追求者として、利用される人々の個性と個別性を重視した最良のケアと保育を提供いたします。

English

What does KOTOEN mean?

The meaning of Kotoen is that Edogawa (Ko) that is east side (To) Tokyo, there is a Utopia (En) exists.

Kotoen has established as an “Old folks home” in 1962. Since then we have stretched our focuses to eldercare, childcare, and disabled care, community/residential welfare to meet the community needs and expectations. The elderly care needs can not only be institutional settings but also residential and daycare settings. Nursery or preschool daycare needs have arisen and expanded our accepting capacity by 150 percent.

When reconstruction took its place in 1987, our newly developed intergenerational business model was introduced. It is still considered a challenging and foremost innovative idea such that distinct social businesses coincided with others over one roof where all kinds of generations come together. We have been witnessing how the program inclusively affects and positively changes the lives of our residents, children and our staff, related family members more than 30 years. Therefore, our intergenerational program is one of the most famous programs in the world. It never changed the way we operate even when government introduced the Long Term Care Insurance System in 2000 shifting some of our operations as central government controlled facilities to public health insurance businesses.

In 2006, another intergenerational facility, Tsubaki, opened for elderly daycare, mentally disabled daycare, and home help services. Kotoen has expanded its social welfare experiences to mentally challenged local residents and families. Surprisingly enough, the intergenerational programs have been naturally introduced and standardized accordingly.

Japan`s recent trends of social business have shifted to Community Comprehensive Care which means that local community setting has its key role where old to young, able to disable can be helping one another to live their lives that they want for the rest of their lives without any forms of discriminations. And, Preventative Care, Rehabilitation, and Rehiring healthy elderly are the further topics to explore associating with A.I, Robotics and IoT.

With that note, “Nagomi No Ie” (a house where hearts warm) opened in April 2018 as a subcontracted public utility business. It is a new multipurpose outreach business where anyone can come and ask for help or to have consultations with different professionals such as MSWs, Community Social Workers, and Public Health Nurses. Also, it has a different function providing a free community space where anyone or any groups of people can gather and spend time. The third function is to provide meals by volunteers. Child poverty or child neglect has been a huge topic now in Japan. Therefore, “Nagomi No Ie” serves its purpose by reaching out to those children as well as elderly in need.

Although the time has passed more than 55years and many operational changes have been made since the establishment, our mission has always been the same. We believe we are happiness pursuers for local community providing the highest levels of care for elderly, person with disabilities, and children. And our goal is to reshape its community where anyone can live their lives that they want without any discriminations; in other words, sustainable and inclusive society.

AARP（American　Association of Retired Person）, is the nation’s largest nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to empowering Americans 50 and older to choose how they live as they age. In 2018, their international journal publishing team made coverage on Japanese intergenerational program as one of successful and sustainable community strategies. Click on the left side image to see short video clip showing the glimpse of Kotoen’s intergenerational program.