Information released by NHK to local governments reveals that over the past five years, there have been at least 339 cases of children temporarily missing from "after-school day service" facilities that take care of children with disabilities. I found out from the bill. Three of these children later died in the river, and experts say, ``The government should take urgent measures to ensure the safety of children at facilities.''

In December of last year, a first-year junior high school boy who was attending an after-school day care facility in Suita City, Osaka, arrived at the facility from school and when he got out of the shuttle vehicle, he suddenly started running and went missing. Ta.



The student was found dead in a nearby river a week later, and police suspect that two employees, including employees of the corporation that runs the facility, were guilty of professional negligence resulting in death, alleging that the facility's negligence in safety management led to the accident. I'm investigating.



In response to this incident, NHK made information disclosure requests to the 10 most populous prefectures, their ordinance-designated cities, and core cities among the local governments that have jurisdiction over the facility, and investigated whether similar accidents had occurred. .



As a result, it was found that there were at least 339 cases in the five years up to last year of children going missing while using facilities.



By prefecture,


Kanagawa Prefecture had the most cases with 94 cases,


followed by


Osaka Prefecture with 71 cases,


Saitama Prefecture with 34 cases,


and Aichi Prefecture with 29 cases.



Of these, three children in Kobe City, Okazaki City, Aichi Prefecture, and a first-year junior high school student in Suita City, Osaka, went missing and later died in the river.



In addition, out of the 339 missing cases, we investigated 282 cases for which the specific circumstances at the time could be confirmed.


▽Of the 339 cases, the cases where the staff went outside without being noticed were the most common, at 131 cases. I was there.



This was followed by


79 cases of people going out while playing in the park or taking a walk,


and 48 cases of people disappearing while getting on or off a courtesy car.



Although some of them were safely rescued, there were


4 cases where they were found on train tracks,


and 2 cases where they were missing for more than 15 hours.



Regarding this current situation, Professor Bunji Yamagata of Kansai University, who is an expert on child welfare, says, ``Some children behave unexpectedly due to the characteristics of their disabilities, but facilities have a small number of staff and monitoring systems are not sufficient.Child safety In order to protect the health of the public, the government should urgently take measures such as reviewing the remuneration system so that motivated facilities can increase the number of staff and improve training."