| Professor Emeritus, Shigeo Okamura and Suisen Fukushikai | |||||
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| Learning Okamura's Theory | ||
| Mr. Shigeo Okamura (Prev. Professor Emeritus at the Osaka City University, Director of Osaka City Social Welfare Training Center) willingly accepted to be the president of support group for Kazenoko Sodachien (Daycare center for adults with intellectual disabilities) which Suisen Fukushikai runs in November, 1991, and had worked until he passed away. He gave a lecture at our staff training and study session for guardians. At another time, he twice held long discussions with staff at the training center, and in addition to this, we were able to visit his house numerous times, and have chance to listen to his thoughts. We started to study Okamura Theory seriously, because he became the president of our corporation's support group, and we were inspired by him through our exchanges. Our corporation's executive tried to understand his books. However, they were constructed with philosophical thought, and recondite theory and sentences. Therefore, we wanted to ask him directly places we couldn't understand, and absorb his idea as much as possible while his health was still steady. He always welcomed us and enthusiastically told us his opinions every time we visited. This is how we found out our principle which is client-centered support is consistent with his theory while listening to his ideas. Since then, we have continued studying Okamura theory at our staff trainings and newcomers trainings every year. However, although we understood his theory abstractly, we found it quite difficult to connect it to our practice. Therefore, we decided to issue a case from each center this year and discuss the principle of social welfare support in Okamura theory. We held three sessions, and to the last invited Hidetaka Matsumoto (Professor of Kobe Gakuin University and a researcher of Okamura theory) as an adviser to deepen the case study. This style was successful. We received feedback such as, "I was able to understand the meaning of the theory well." and "I could grasp the hand of my job." from participants. We would like to continue checking our basic principle of interpersonal support based on Okamura theory and our practice will be substantive. And now, we have some tape transcriptions of Prof. Okamura's lecture and discussion meeting with him. We have used them quite often as materials for staff training. However, it is a waste to use the transcriptions just at our corporation because every transcription has a great content. We decided to post them on our website, because we hope people in the field will read it and it will contribute to the enlightenment of Okamura theory. We would like to believe that his theory will become helpful in practice for people and bring motivation to their work and joy to their life. November, 2007
Hiroshi Matsumura, President of Social Welfare Corporation SUISEN FUKUSHIKAI Executive Director of I-Support Research Center |
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