A Study of Implementing Green Care in Taiwan Welfare Institutions

The number of the disadvantaged prople in Taiwan is rising by year. They all have the demand of the resettlement of asylum, and the demand of care for both physical and mental problem. European countries and America usually provide “Green Care” to these vulnerable groups, which utilize horticultural plant and animal elements etc. combine with health care concepts, to increase their daily activities, social contct opportunities and keep them healthy. It is very suitable for social welfare organization in Taiwan. There has been little research about Green Care concerned social welfare organizations as their research objects, to understand how social welfare organizations implement Green Care and what achievement they obtain and what difficulties they encounter in Green Care process. Most researches are about the benefits brought from green care in different individual cases. Besides, farms are often used to provide green care by Care facilities in foreign countries. There are more and more applications in Taiwan as well. However, there are only little research about the mode of care farm operation. Therefore, the purposes of this research are as follow. First, to find out the green care situation of social welfare organization in Taiwan. Second, to understand the benefits and the potential difficulties comparing the organization with farm to organization without farm. Third, to go into the green care management strategy and the means to plight of social welfare organization. Fourth, to know the difference of green care operation management comparing different mode of Green Care farm. This research include two studies. Study one is collecting the news of green care social welfare organization and use content analysis on different social welfare organization、beneficial result and potential problem to build up different category. Study two is according to the result of study one and related references. It turns out that disabled persons’ organization has more opportunities using farm activities to give health care and develop farm work in order to protect them the right to participate in society and economic fairly. Therefore, I choose disabled persons’ organization with farm as my study object to interview deeply and compare different cases from the background of setting up farm, the operation of green care farm, the outcome of the farm. The result shows that the most mentioned effects are improvement of mental stress, physical function and more social contact chance. Furthermore, Green Care with farm has personal effect on returning to society, improvement of work ability, access to jobs opportunities more. Above individual benefits could respond to the outcome of second study that the motivation of disabled persons’ organization setting up farm is to increase activities space and provide job opportunities. In addition, most interviewed organizations attribute stable emotion, better physical function, improvement of intellecture and working ability and participation in society are to Green Care farm.On the other hand, Green Care has two effects for organization itself, operation benefit and finance benefit, usually mentioned by those news of social welfare organizations with farm. The self-sufficient operation and revenue feedback are the main benefit results. Furthermore, providing leisure and recreation activities and maintain environment ecology are common social and environment benefits from care farm. When it comes to the plights of social welfare organization implementing green care, lots of news are relate to Green Care with farm, referring to cases dealing with insufficient funds and ability constrains. Organizations in study two point out that constrains on legislation farmland policy. First, private social welfare organization can’t have the property of farmland. Second, organizations are very hard to build suitable farm environment to service objects because the policy of farmland only for agriculture use. Third, when disaster happens, social welfare organization can’t get financial subsidy due to the beneficiary is for normal farmer not for social welfare organizations. To deal with the financial plight the organization can cooperate with others, which will decrease the operation cost, or focusing on project having economic scale to make market segmentation and make the products price stable, these manner may help organization increase their revenue. As for the human resource plight, the organization will train staffs how to gardening and encourage them to improve care knowledge and skill of Green Care so that they can make up the lack of green care profession. Last but not least, the key manners for excuating Green Care are devided service objects several groups according to their physicial and mental condition、dividing workflow、design assisted tool、achievement feedback. The solutions to solve the plight that people participating in green care, are dispatching work which can solve the problem of mental and behavior, however, sometimes the suitable punishment also solutions as well. In addition, the organization will give rules to emergency for the purpose of precaution. According to the result, researcher suggests that the government shold conditionally lift the restriction of agricultural regulations. Organizations could diversify Green Care activities but still need at least one item as major production. Besides organization should encourage staff to participate training course or certification by various Taiwan Green Care associations, and design individual goal of Green Care. Finally, social welfare organizations should investigate what resource and capability they have. Organizations can consider managing a farm by themselves. Undertake the responsibility to raise the benefits for service objects or their own. However, there still are other choices that organizations can also consider to cooperate with leisure farm or private farm so that they don’t need to worry about the lack of resource.