EXAMINING THE CONDITIONS IN CARE FACILITIES FOR INFANTS AND THE ELDERLY

On Dec. 9, the Seoul Metropolitan City Space Improvement Bureau (hereinafter CSIB) hosted an online forum under the theme of ‘A City in Need of Care: Facilities for Infants, Children , should be increased to more than 15m , which is the range applied in case studies abroad credited as excellent’. In the second part of the Forum, Song Injoo (manager, Seoul Welfare Foundation), Yoon Minseok (researcher, The Seoul Institute), Kim Sanggil (principal, ATEC Architects & Associates), and Jung Soondul (professor, Ewha Womans University) discussed facilities for the elderly. There were many negative remarks about existing care homes for elderly. Jung Soondul commented on one case: ‘care facilities for the elderly, which have been tailored to and designed on behalf of a group of four users due to financial issues, may need to be converted into facilities for individuals to protect the privacy of every resident’. Yoon Minseok added, ‘the requests of elderly residents can be accommodated and reflected much more rapidly in the facilities owned by the private sector because their administrative procedures are more streamline than those in the public sector’.