ABSTRACT
Kateiyôgo sokushin kyôkai, known in English as Loving Hands or the Association for the Advancement of Family Care, is a fostering and adoption agency established in the early 1960s in Osaka and Kobe. The agency office in Osaka is provided with the details of about 50 children per year by the Osaka CGC and the Kobe office deals with about 40 children a year from the Kobe CGC. Four local authorities, namely Kobe City, Hyôgo Prefecture, Osaka City and Osaka Prefecture contribute about 20% of its finance, with the rest coming from donations, membership fees and fundraising activities (Kateiyôgo 2004). The collaboration with the CGCs and service agreements with local authorities gives the agency a quasipublic status, part-way between a state-run child guidance centre and a private adoption agency. The quasi-official status of the voluntary organization is in keeping with other institutions in Japan that blur the boundaries between state and society (Neary 2003). These include volunteer welfare commissioners (minsei i’in) about 15,000 of whom have child welfare as their principal responsibility (Takahashi 2003: 104). In the area of adoption, however, the position of Loving Hands is unique.
