Minegishi
I spent 6 years in a child protection facility from the first grade of junior high school until I graduated from high school. I am currently studying at university where I major in social welfare. Until I entered university, I didn’t like adults working in the field of child welfare. I met many professionals who only sympathized with my family environment, but did nothing to change it.
I have once made up my mind that I would never go into social welfare as my career. But there is a reason why I am now studying social welfare.
The reason was because I met adults who treated me not just by commiserating with my upbringing. They saw me not as someone who grew up in an unfortunate home, but as someone who was living in this moment. Some of them were welfare professionals. They told me that they wanted to do something about the current situation of children in Japan, that they felt powerless since they could not do anything about it, and that they still are not giving up. While I was happy to know their intention, I hated myself for just listening to these adults struggle and for disliking social welfare. So I decided to study social welfare, thinking that I could prove to the adults who looked out for me that
their hard work had been well received by me.
I would like to learn various things in order to create a future in which children in foster care are willing to find opportunities, to allow themselves to rely on adults, and to create things that can be done only in the environment of institutional care under the foster care system.
